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5 



THE 



Religion of the Present 



AND OF 



THE FUTURE 



SERMONS PREACHED CHIEFLY AT YALE COLLEGE 



BY 

THEODORE D^WOOLSEY 



NEW EDITION 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1887 



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Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1S7I, os 

CHARLES SCRIBNER & COMPANY 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington 



Copyright, 1S87, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 027748 






c* o 



JUN 1 t W9 




TO THOSE 

WHO HAVE NOW AND THEN HEARD MY VOICE 

IN THE PULPIT OF TALE COLLEGE, 

AND ESPECIALLY 

TO THE GRADUATES WHO HAVE GONE FORTH FROM THESE HALL&. 

J.EAVING ME HERE UNTIL NOW, 

WHEN MT TIME OF GRADUATION IS NEARLY COME, 

I AFFECTIONATELY 

INSCRIBE THESE DISCOURSES, 

AS AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE RESPECT AND LOVE 

WEICU TSEY HAVE SSOWN ME. 



PREFACE. 



Soon after making known, in December, 1870, my 
intention to resign the Presidency of Yale College, it 
was suggested to me by the eminent publishing 
house, whose name is on the title-page, that I should 
put into their hands for publication a selection of 
Sermons preached by me in the College Chapel. A 
request to the same effect came some time before 
from members of one of the classes just before their 
graduation, and I have been encouraged to do this by 
persons on whose judgment I rely. 

It is proper to say, for the information of some 
who may meet with this book, that my ministrations 
were confined to special occasions and to intervals 
when there was no regular preacher. 

In regard to the Sermons selected, I desire to say 
that some of them are devoted to subjects of especial 
importance at the present time ; others consider as- 
pects of religious life which need, as it seems to me, 
to be brought before the public in this country, and, 
above all, before students ; while others still are 
taken up with the prospects of Christianity in the 



vi Preface. 

future. Hence the title — The Keligion of the Pres- 
ent and of the Future — appeared to be not altogether 
inappropriate. 
Yale College, May, 1871. 



A debtee having been expressed by friends and the 
publishers of this volume for the issue of a new 
edition, it seemed best to make a few changes, which 
might add to its usefulness. These changes consist 
mostly in the substitution of four new sermons in the 
place of an equal number of sermons in the first 
edition. The new discourses are those numbered 
XII, XVI, XIX, and XX. 

T. D. W. 

New Haven, Conn., May y 1887. 



CONTENTS. 



i 

PAGE 

The Early Years of Christ, 9 

n. 

The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness, . 24 

m. 

Christ Charged with being Beside Himself, . . 42 

IV. 

Neutrality in regard to Christ impossible, . .57 

V. 

The Self-propagating Power of Sin, . . .71 

VI. 
Sin Unnatural, 87 

m 

Sin not Self-reformatory, 102 

vm. 

Sin Measured by the Disposition, not by the Act, . 115 



viii Contents. 

IX. 

PAGE 

The Blindness of Men, and the Nearness of the 

Spiritual World, 129 

X. 

Union of Justice and Grace in God, . . . 143 

XI. 

Earthly Things must be Believed before Heavenly 

CAN BE, ....... 160 

xn. 

Lord, I Believe ; Help Thou mine Unbelief, . 173 

xm. 

Peter Helped by his Fall to Strengthen his Breth- 
ren, 186 

XIV. 

Forgetting those Things which are Behind, . . 197 

XV. 

Sobriety of Mind urged on Young Men, . . 210 

XVI. 

^ Time Past, Present, and to Come, .... 230 

xvn. 

The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their 

Basis, ........ 245 

xvm. 

The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past, . 260 



Contents. ix 

XIX. 

PAGE 

Christ Delivering Believers from this present Evil 

World, 275 

N XX. 

• Self-sacrifice, 288 

XXL 

• Thf Benefits to Character of Ignorance of the 

Futuke, 306 

xxn. 

The Stability of God's Throne, . . . . 321 

xxni. 

• The Stability of the Christian Church, . . 335 

XXIV. 

Longings for the Heavenly City, . . . .350 

XXV. 

\ The Keligion of the Future, . . . .364 



SERMON I. 

THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRIST. 

Lttke ii. 51, 52. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, 
and was subject unto them; but His mother kept all these sayings in 
her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, (jjAi/cuj, age) and 
in favor with God and Man. 

From the time when Jesus at the age of twelve 
visited Jerusalem with His parents, there is an interval of 
eighteen years until the date of His baptism, during which 
we know next to nothing of His life. Our text informs us 
that He returned to Nazareth from the holy city, and 
was subject to His parents ; from another place, where 
He is called " the carpenter," we learn that He followed 
that employment; from another still, we learn that 
His manner was on the Sabbath day to read the Scrip- 
tures in the synagogue. These are all the particulars 
left on record for us belonging to this period of a life more 
glorious, more eventful, than any other since the world 
began. Now it is painful to be thus kept in ignorance 
concerning one who is dear to us. A gap in a great 
life is like an unfinished place in a picture, or a hiatus in 
an important manuscript. We lose the sense of a con- 
tinued existence, and the imagination flutters about in the 
effort to construct the unknown portions of the great 
whole after the model of those with which we arc ac- 
1* 9 



10 • The Early Years of Christ. 

quainted. As the child loves to hear from his father what 
he did when he was a little boy ; as, when he grows older, 
he wants to take a view of that parent's life in its separate 
parts, in their connections, in the development of the 
finished man; so would we all naturally love to know 
more of Jesus, how He grew up from childhood into youth, 
how He acted in the family and in the town, how He 
matured into the Messiah with a perfect idea of His office, 
such as we behold Him immediately after His Baptism. 

But this is not the severe method of Scripture. All it 
tells is for our use and nothing is for our curiosity. It 
awakens our minds to higher spiritual knowledge, but 
refuses to answer a thousand questions that we ask. It gives 
glimpses, but holds up no broad light reaching from the 
beginning to the end. It crosses gulfs and leaves the path 
unknown. It discloses the scattered facts of theology, but 
gives us no system. It neither aims nor cares to gratify 
our speculative power, content if it can sway our practical. 
When it has done with us, more unsolved and insoluble 
problems arise than before, for as it leads us up from 
nature to God it shows to us outlines of great mysteries 
which baffle our reason. So then, when it hides the Lord 
Jesus from us for a large part of His life in this world, 
it is consistent with itself and unlike the works of man. 

But some one has observed that the reserve, the sacred 
silence of the Word is richer, fuller of meaning, more 
teaching than the narratives of ordinary history.* In the 
spirit of that remark I propose to inquire, as far as can be 
modestly done, what was the use of the early life of our 
Lord, and how it bore upon the later periods of His public 
ministry? Can we not make it strongly probable that a 
divine wisdom presided over this silent interval, laid up in 
it treasures of thought and character for His future years, 
and fitted Him in the stillness and lowliness of th& Gali- 
lean village for the highest office that man ever filled ? 

* Trench in his Hulsean Lectures. 



The Early Years of Christ. 11 

And here, before we go further, we need to say a word 
to those to whom such a subject can be of no benefit, 
because they do not believe in the normal human devel- 
opment of the Lord Jesus. To such persons He is a 
simple miracle of existence ; one who knew, when a child, 
whatever He knew when a man ; one in whom there was 
no growth nor advance ; always and equally full of God ; 
and by consequence hiding His knowledge from the first, 
until the occasion came for making use of it. But this is 
a very false and unscriptural view. It is inconsistent with 
our text, which tells us that Jesus increased in wisdom and 
in favor with God. It would, in fact, make the man 
Jesus a mere appearance, a vehicle for concealing omnis- 
cience. It thus presents Him to us, no longer as growing 
and rising according to the law of incorrupt manhood, but 
as a prodigy, having nothing in common with man in the 
movements of His intellect, and therefore incapable of ex- 
ercising the feelings of a human finite soul. That thus in 
fact the human in Christ must be destroyed is apparent. 
Such a view of Him gets no support from the Gospel, nor 
from ancient faith. 

Conceiving of Him then, as in a transition from child- 
hood to manhood, as in a process of training for the 
highest of works, we ask what lessons are to be gathered 
from His silent years ? And 

First, we shall conclude that God qualified His Son, 
born of a woman, made under the law, for His future office, 
by the training of the family state. " And was subject to 
his parents." 

The family state, we cannot doubt, was most happily 
devised, according to the original plan of incorrupt 
human nature, not only for the preservation and physical 
welfare of the child, but also for the development of all 
the higher qualities of man. It is the beginning and the 
condition of society. He who passes out of its healthy 
training into the larger circle of fellow-citizens or fellow- 



12 The Early Years of Christ. 

men, has a foundation already laid for all social sym- 
pathies, for the conception of human brotherhood, for the 
exercise of good will in every form. It is also the condi- 
tion of, and the preparation for, all law. The dependent 
being, trained up in it to listen to higher authority and 
wisdom, to give up self-will and practice self-control, 
becomes fitted for the loyal life of the citizen, and for 
obedience to God. Thus it was meant, according to the 
primeval plan, that the infant mind should be disciplined 
in the family for a life of law and of love — law, which 
should lead the soul up to the great central Lawgiver of 
the universe, and love, which should embrace the brother- 
hood of souls, and God, the Father of all. Such was the 
idea and type of the family which, through the fall of the 
race, has not been fully realized. But if there should be 
anywhere a sinless child, brought up by pious, even if 
imperfect parents, must we not suppose that a large share 
of the blessings properly belonging to family life would 
fail to his portion ? Where else could there be found 
such a happy introduction into life, into its responsibilities, 
its sympathies, its powers of acting in and upon mankind? 
Here the holy child would grow, not into something 
angelic, but into a holy man, into a brother in the human 
family, possessed of recollections and modes of thinking 
which would give Him superior power in this world to an 
angel, unless an angel could put off his own nature and 
his own laws of thought. In short, whatever need there 
was that the Saviour of men should take humanity upon 
Him, there was the same need that He should be an entire 
man, that He should pass through the stages of our nature, 
learn by experience its relations, grow into perfect man- 
hood under its laws. Thus only could He be a Saviour 
for man at all, thus only could He become like unto His 
brethren. It thus became natural for Him to conceive of 
God as His Father, and natural when He founded a church, 
to unite its members by the tie of brotherhood. His soul 



The Early Years of Christ 13 

was fitted for its work by entering into the great relations 
of humanity. 

II. Jesus passed through the discipline of a life of 
humble industry. " Is not this the carpenter ?" Here we 
have two things to notice, the discipline of a life of in- 
dustry upon the Son of Man, and the influence of the 
lowly position which He thus assumed among His brethren 
of mankind. 

The spirit of the ancient world, owing chiefly to the 
institution of slavery, undervalued and even despised a 
life of mechanical or agricultural labor. The same is 
true of countries in modern times, where an order of 
nobles, an aristocracy of birth owning the land for the 
most part, and having the power of society in its hands, 
keeps the people from rising above a certain level. Now, 
admitting, as we may, that there is a natural distinction of 
classes among men, derived from the intellectual require- 
ments of their callings, we must condemn this contempt 
of labor as vicious and hurtful to society. Why should 
those callings, which the mass of a race, made in God's 
image, must fill, be of course degrading ? And if a man 
could unite skill, in manual labor, with highly cultivated 
thought, would he not be, every way, more of a man for 
such skill — more of a man than he who is dependent on 
the labor of slaves, and more of a man than he who is a 
mere thinker? Would not a pure, incorrupt man, as he 
worked under God's sun and clouds, or subdued matter 
into new forms by the tools of skill, be all the while more 
open to heavenly thought than he who was engrossed by 
speculation, or occupied among the perplexities of pro- 
fessional study and employment ? 

We must conceive, then, that during these years of 
labor as a carpenter, the Son of Man had time, even amid 
His work, for noble and holy thoughts. His attention was; 
not so strained, nor His powers of mind so absorbed, that 
thought could not go and come continually to and from 



14 The Early Years of Christ 

God. How much better this than to be trained in the 
little subtleties and formalities of Pharisaic schools ; how 
much truer to nature, and nearer to truth, and nearer to 
God, such a discipline ! 

Nor ought we to lay out of account the patience which 
sedulous manual labor would bring along with it. The 
patience of our Lord gained strength from yet another 
source, as we shall soon see ; but His daily tasks must 
have cultivated this quality, so important to His future 
work. For in the mechanical employments there is a 
certain amount of work which can be done well each day, 
the quality of which hurry will mar. The spirit of daily 
industry, theu, is a spirit of patience, and the true work- 
man, he who is neither slack from indolence, nor impa- 
tient from a desire to get through or to do too much, 
must be regular, moderate, even in his efforts, disposed to 
work as loug, and to wait for the end as long as sound 
judgment requires. 

I may add, that the helpfulness of our Lord in His 
calling tended to strengthen the principle of helpfulness 
to mankind, or of unwearied benevolence. 

The scattered efforts to do good, to which we give our- 
selves, once a week, or every now and then, are useful, 
but then, we fall back from them, how often, into a life of 
indolence or selfishness, collecting our forces as it were, 
for returning fits of benevolence, because we are not 
strong enough to do good all the while. Thus, we do but 
little and grow but little ; for our intervals of ease, per- 
haps of self-indulgence, undermine or obstruct the nobler 
habit. But the patient helpfulness of Jesus, as He did His 
work well in and for the family, inured His holy mind to 
the hard toils of that glorious life of love, in which we 
learn, on one occasion, that He had not time so much as 
to eat bread, and gave Himself up to works of mercy 
so earnestly that His friends thought Him mad. 
What other training could have equally encouraged His 
unwearied devotion to the hard, slow work of doing good? 



The Early Years of Christ. 15 

But the obscurity of the sphere in which Jesus moved, 
aided the graces of His character, such as meekness and 
lowliness, and also enlarged His 'power of usefulness. 
Here we notice only the last particular, leaving the others 
for future remark. It is often thought to add to a man's 
power among men, if he is born in a high place, and com- 
mands the respect of mankind as well by his ancestry 
and station, as by what he is. But the power to act upon 
men, so far as it depends on feeling with them, and being 
felt with by them, is generally abridged by position above 
the major part of mankind : at least, however high a man 
rises above his fellows, there should be a chord of common 
feeling, never forgotten and never extinguished sym- 
pathies between him and them, which early life on their 
level had kindled or strengthened. Hence it is, that 
those monarchs who have risen from the people can know 
them better, and come closer to their admiration and 
their hearts, than such as have inherited the throne. 
Hence, too, those Reformers are likely to be most success- 
ful, who add to other advantages that of a lively interest 
in and comprehension of the great mass of men, which 
their birth and early education has encouraged. The son 
of the miner, at Eisleben, with his homely, earnest pea- 
sant-soul, and his manly courage, was fitter to attract and 
mingle with his countrymen, was better able, when his 
mind had become enlarged by study, to spread the Pro- 
testant Reformation, than if he had been the son of an 
Emperor of Germany, or one of the princes of the Em- 
pire. Such a personage, if he could have understood 
and preached the Gospel, would have found that a gulf 
was fixed between him and his people. He would have 
been to them " a separate star" that "dwelt apart." If he 
had converted his court, still religion would have boon 
shut up as by a high wall, from the eyes and sympathies 
of the nation. So, too, it is probable, that the compara- 
tively humble birth of Socrates, contributed not a little 



16 The Early Years of Christ. 

toward forming his philosophy. It was human, for it 
descended from the lofty speculations of earlier philoso- 
phers to man himself. It was homely and simple, seek- 
ing its illustrations, and drawing its truths from every- 
day trades and pursuits. An Athenian of the highest 
birth would have found it much more difficult to com- 
mence that reform in philosophy which was the highest 
achievement of the Grecian mind. 

These considerations show, I think, the wisdom of God 
in selecting such a birth, birth-place, and pursuit for His 
divine Son. If He was to become one with man in the 
highest sense, to become able to preach to the poor, and 
heal the broken-hearted, and mingle with all men, down 
to publicans and sinners, if, in short, His condition in life 
was to have any effect on His work, and on His power in 
it, where else could He have been brought up with more 
advantage? 

III. The silent years at Nazareth enabled Him to 
meditate long and deeply on the Scriptures. A striking 
characteristic of our Lord, from the first moment of His 
public ministry onward, is His reverence for and famili- 
arity with the Scriptures. In the wilderness the tempter 
is rebuked by sentences from the divine word. At the last 
supper, the words which institute the rite, take their 
coloring from certain most important passages in the 
prophets ; His words of agony on the cross are in the 
language of the 22d Psalm ; and when the risen Lord 
appeared to His disciples " He opened their understand- 
ings that they might understand the Scriptures." And if 
we go back beyond the commencement of His public min- 
istry, we find the only habit of life recorded of Him to be 
that " He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day 
and stood up for to read." Here, then, in this sequest- 
ered village, away from the emptiness of Pharisaical 
learning, and from Sadducean skepticism, He was reared 
on the divine word in its simplicity, was fortified by it 






The Early Years of Christ. 17 

against temptation, studied its promises of a coming 
Messiah, and became ready to apply it to the varying 
circumstances of practical life. 

The wisdom of God in subjecting His Son in the form 
of a servant to this discipline can easily be made manifest. 
Why was Jesus born a Jew, of the seed of David accord- 
ing to the flesh, but that He might partake of and hand 
down the old religion, so far as it was permanent truth 
and not local, transitory legislation ? He might in some 
other land, by a series of supernatural influences from 
childhood upwards, have acquired the same truths, 
without the help of Scripture or any external revelation : 
but such was not the plan of God. He trained mankind 
through the Jews; He made His Son a Jew that He 
might build up on the old foundation the new truths of a 
religion for the world ; and in order that Jesus Himself 
might be trained up for this work He chose this simple 
method of placing Him alone with the ancient Scriptures, 
away from human teachers and comments, that the pure 
truth of God might fill His mind. 

IV. The life of retirement which Jesus led at Nazareth 
was fitted to nourish some of those meek and unpretend- 
ing graces of character which shone beyond comparison in 
Him. 

I name first patience, or willingness to wait until the 
right time was come. In order to understand fully how 
in the divine plan, the circumstances of His life trained 
Him in the exercise of this virtue, we must bear in mind 
that He had long had glimpses, if nothing more, of some 
unique relation to the Father, and some work marked out 
for Him by the Father. " Wist ye not," said He at the 
age of twelve to His parents, " that I must be about my 
Father's business ?" — or, as it may well be rendered, " in 
my Father's house." Now it is idle to speculate and im- 
possible to know how much of His great career was opened 
to Him before His baptism, or by what means it was 



18 The Early Years of Christ, 

opened. This, however, we know, that He increased in 
wisdom, and therefore that His comprehension of the 
Messiah's work must have been far broader and truer at 
thirty than at twelve. But the great fact for us here is 
that He knew of a work before Him, whether the outlines 
were clear or obscure ; and that through these eighteen 
years He waited until the Father should call Him to the 
field He was to fill. Think how He waited, day after day, 
year after year, in contentment and peace, while life 
seemed to be moving no nearer to its goal. Think how 
this patience was built on simple obedience to the will of 
God, and prepared Him for the like obedience in the years 
of trial and suffering which awaited Him, so that His cha- 
racter was summed up in those words of the Psalm, "I 
delight to do thy will, O my God : yea, thy law is within 
my heart." Think too how trying it is, as measured by a 
human standard, when one is conscious of being able and 
called to do something great, to be obliged to live in ob- 
scurity and inaction ; how human self-will chafes when 
its way forward is hedged up ; and how sometimes great 
minds have made a wreck of themselves, and blasphemed 
God, because their active powers and their feelings could 
find no suitable theatre. Think how zeal for God itself, 
and the desire to be doing good to man, would concur in 
His case with that love of activity which is a principle of 
the nature He assumed, to spur Him forward and push Him 
into a more public life. But He dwelt in the lowly vil- 
lage for long years as quietly and contentedly as if He 
had no outlook on a greater world of sins and wants, and 
no aspirations for any other sphere ; as if His life was to 
end in the humble employments and lowly condition in 
which it began. And this patient contentment was not a 
natural product, the fruit of a perfect temperament, but 
it was the fruit of piety. It grew out of a union of His 
will to God, and grew up to its completeness by a long 
training of His will to obedience in this school of waiting 



The Early Years of Christ 19 

and of trust. When it was complete the time came for 
Him to appear as the Messiah before the world. 

I cannot help stopping here to show the glory of 
Christ's character, thus ripened, by contrasting it with the 
principles on which even the best of us are prone to act, 
when we enter into life. He waited until thirty, and in 
a little over three years founded a kingdom that shall be 
universal and eternal. We think no good is done until 
the work of life is taken hold of. If our work is the 
ministry, where maturity of judgment, of reason, and of 
piety should unite, still we often rush forward as if time 
were our enemy and were robbing us of usefulness. 
Without treasure of thoughts, without solid convictions, 
without a feeling of strength, with nothing but feverish 
haste and that poorest of gifts, the gift of words flatten- 
ing and belittling borrowed thoughts, some leap into the 
pulpit, as if it were heroic rather than fool-hardy to take 
responsibilities to which they were not equal, as if a call 
consisted of bold desire. How unlike the divine Master ! 
Then too, we seem not to believe in preparation ; we seem 
to be unwilling to get ripe, as if long experience were 
needed to ripen the apprentice in a handicraft, but in the 
liberal professions, especially in the sacred one, every one 
could begin on the stock of small study, and practice 
would bring up what was wanting. And thus the moral 
training, so far beyond the intellectual in importance, our 
years of calm prayerful ness in sight of our fields, our 
communings with God initiating us into the place He has 
laid up for us — all this is abridged, or is lost sight of in 
our fever to begin the race, or postponed until life with its 
cares shall give our feeble principles no room to grow. 
When we enter into our callings, too, we are aspiring for 
some higher sphere ; — discontented where we are, we un* 
dervalue our usefulness, while perhaps overvaluing our 
powers ; we lose our peace, our motives and our resigna- 
tion, and wonder what God has in store for us ; whereas 



20 The Early Years of Christ. 

the quietest nook in His service, if we were led by Him, 
would be so fraught with spiritual blessings that it would 
be a haven of joy to us ; and if divorced from it at His 
call, we should thank Him forever afterwards that He 
called us to such a sanctuary at the beginning. Oh ! my 
brethren, this self-confident, this hurrying, unripe, aspiring 
character which makes nothing of meditation, this bold- 
ness without strength and ardor without depth — let us 
bring it to the touchstone of our perfect Lord, and see 
how His character rebukes it. 

The same discipline which perfected the patience, per- 
fected also the calmness of Jesus. In fact the two graces 
can scarcely dwell far apart. The calmness of our Lord 
was not a negative virtue of temperament, — the inability 
to be strongly moved by anything great, nor was it simply 
the self-control of a being of large reason, allaying the ex- 
citements of the present by a look into the future ; but it 
was, like His patience, a fruit of piety. And as He waited 
on God, and rested in God, the things of time, as they 
swept before Him, were not disturbing nor agitating, for 
God and peace were in His soul ; and the more perfect 
His obedience grew, through His years of waiting, the 
deeper and heavenlier became His calmness. 

This discipline of His still years gave strength also to 
His retiring spirit, or modesty. This may seem a wrong 
term to apply to our Saviour, who never shrank from duty 
on the open field of public life, nor feared the face of man, 
nor fell, through diffidence, below the responsibilities of 
the situation. But by whatever name we call it, there 
was in Him a quality most opposite to ostentation and love 
of notoriety, which led Him to prefer, in itself considered, 
being unknown before public fame, and retirement before 
crowds of followers. In Him was fulfilled that passage of 
Isaiah : " He shall not strive, nor cry, nor cause His voice 
to be heard in the streets." His was the preference of an 
humble, quiet, lowly life, such as He had led since His 



The Early Years of Christ 21 

infancy, to a life of publicity and renown. It is plain, 
that such a spirit was as unlike to that which false opinion 
attributed to the coming Christ, as it was honorable and 
glorious to Him who came in the form of a servant 
With this spirit He resisted the tempter's suggestions to 
throw Himself down from the temple, aud to receive at 
his hands the authority of a worldly Messiah. Now, a 
spirit like this, would be cultivated by the lowliness of His 
condition at Nazareth, and would be a preparation for 
meekly wearing the honor and carrying the consciousness 
of the Messianic office. And they follow Him who are 
sought by honor and repute rather than seek them, who 
delight to live in quiet communion with God, who are lost 
in their work when they enter upon it without wasting 
thought on themselves or the impression they make, who 
are not quick to attract attention, and need some dis- 
cerning person to seek them out and discover them. Such 
persons, I say, are like Jesus — most like Him, if their 
character rests on the rock of godliness, and more capable 
than others of becoming like Him, if it has only a natural 
foundation. 

I only add, that the retirement of Nazareth was fitted 
to nourish simplicity of feeling and character. It has been 
made a definition of a wise and pure life to live according 
to nature. Such a mode of living is almost impossible in 
the most refined states of society, unless that society is 
equally advanced in Christian culture. The etiquettes, 
the formalities, the spirit of caste and clique, the tyranny 
of opinion make it hard for a man to be true to nature 
and to himself. The s< ul becomes artificial without 
knowing it, ceases to think its own thoughts, and forsakes 
truth for the voice of the governing crowd. How diffi- 
cult is honesty now, when politeness is a rule committed to 
memory and not a prompting of nature, when an external 
standard seizes a man, unless he is made of iron, and 
moulds him into something unlike his true self, into a 



22 The Early Years of Christ 

thing of shows and artifices, — perhaps of falsehood*. Sim- 
plicity and honesty are the gold of character — how hard 
are they to keep, how rare to find ; and when they are 
kept through the temptations of a conventional life, they 
exhibit a certain kind of worn and stern aspect — the effect 
of long and tough resistance to opposing powers. 

The simplicity and honesty of the man Christ Jesus were, 
no doubt, nourished and perfected in a simple, godly 
family, in a simple village, away from much of the gloss 
and falsehood which abounded in Judea. We might con- 
ceive of divine wisdom taking just the opposite method of 
calling it forth, that of placing Jesus in close neighbor- 
hood to formal and false Pharisees, so that His education 
should consist in loathing the characters which He should 
see around Him. That strength would come from such a 
discipline we cannot doubt ; and yet the other plan, which 
was in fact chosen, seems the best for a harmonious per- 
fection of the whole character, and especially for the pre- 
dominance of the gentler virtues. 

I have selected the subject which we have considered, 
for a reason already hinted at, — because it seemed to me 
that many excellent persons have very false, or at least, 
obscure views of the excellence of the man Christ — views 
which strip Him of a part of the glory of His condescension 
and rob His example of a great part of its power. They 
seem to assume that His union with God took Him out of 
the category of men ; He was, so to speak, free no longer, 
and a man no longer; but absorbed in, and moved by a 
divine nature which superseded the ordinary laws of hu- 
manity. Nothing could be more untrue than such a con- 
ception. He was as truly and properly man as He was 
God. As man, He was subject to the laws of human devel- 
opment and progress ; He grew in wisdom, grew in strength 
of character, grew in consciousness of His exalted relation 
to the Father. As man, He was subject to the limitations 
of our nature, except so far as He was specially endowed 



The Early Years of Christ. 23 

with a divine power corresponding with His divine office. 
As man, He had specific traits of character, the assemblage 
of which in harmony, resting on a foundation of spotless 
godliness, constituted His perfection. These traits of cha- 
racter were cultivated under the guiding hand of Provi- 
dence, and the control of godliness; until they reached 
their highest beauty and excellence. Hence the beauty of 
His example, hence His nearness to our hearts, and the soft 
attractiveness of His love. 

It has been our endeavor to point out, as far as we 
could do, how the circumstances of His eaily life con- 
tributed, or at least, to show how they could contribute to 
this result. This is a far modester undertaking than to 
seek to show how His attributes, as a divine being and a 
human, could co-exist : into that subject of profound mys- 
tery, where Scripture holds up no torch, ever so faint, be- 
fore our eyes, we venture not to intrude. Enough for us, 
that His Godhead did not prevent His being a suffering 
man just like ourselves — made in all things like unto His 
brethren, save without sin. He who cannot believe this, 
cannot receive Him, in the fulness of His office, as the 
Mediator bstween sinful men and God. 



SEHMON II. 

THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS. 
Matthew iv. 1, 11, (The narrative of the temptation.) 

As the first Adam, acting on behalf of his race, was ex- 
posed to a trial of his obedience, so it became the second 
Adam, when He began His mediatorial work, to have His 
character pass through the fires of temptation. In His 
private and quiet life before His baptism He must have 
encountered and overcome temptation, for He could not. 
well have lived in this world to the age of thirty without 
having excitements of wrong desire present before His 
mind, and without making His choice between obedience 
and disobedience. But now, when He had received a 
solemn inauguration by baptism from the forerunner, and 
a most remarkable testimony from God by a voice from 
heaven, — now, when publicly and formally He took the 
place of representative for mankind in the system of grace, 
and when interests weightier than man had sustained 
before hiiDg on His conduct, — now, I say, there was a 
momentous crisis ; and the parties most aware of what He 
might accomplish as the Son of God might well be most 
active in putting His character to the test. Accordingly 
the sacred historian tells us that God and Satan, the 
kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness, were alike 
concerned in His temptation. " Then was Jesus," says St. 
Matthew, " led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be 
tempted of the devil." 

The first thing that strikes us here is that Jesus was not 
master of His own movements. An unerring voice, which 
He knew to be from Heaven, sent Him into the lonely wil- 
derness — the place where no society or communion could 
24 



The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 25 

disturb the law of development of His character — in order 
to be tempted in that solitude. He could not have gone 
thither Himself, aware of the trial before Him, without 
tempting God ; neither the Son of God in the form of a 
servant, nor any of His followers, would have a right to go 
uncalled into temptation ; but when thus called He could 
not refuse to go without disobeying the Father, without, 
in fact, abandoning the office of a Saviour. 

The next thing which arrests our attention and, at first, 
our wonder, is that he was led by the Spirit into the wil- 
derness to be tempted of the devil. What a fearful and 
solemn glimpse is here given to us of the moral agencies 
of the universe. Good and evil, infinite good and abso- 
lute evil, good and evil in personal substance, with that 
intense antipathy to one another that souls of the largest 
grasp and depth must feel, are in restless action around 
a human soul. The infinitely good has power not only 
to baffle His foe, but to destroy and annihilate him ; and 
yet, seeing in the existence and activity of evil some great 
good for the universe, He allows it free movement, so that 
its wild waves dash against the very throne of heaven. 
The absolute evil, on the other hand, knows in its very 
soul, that no art, force or obstinacy can gain any advan- 
tage over God ; yea, that its stragglings will enhance His 
glory ; and yet, such is the strength of desperate purpose, 
so hopeless is the derangement of reason produced by sin, 
that it must go on its journey through shame and hate, 
finding its only semblance of happiness in the restless ac- 
tivity of an immortal nature. 

And if such parties were concerned in the temptation 
something of importance must have depended on the re- 
sult. It cannot have been a mere show presented to the 
eyes of the universe, a bare form of initiation through 
which the Son of God, incapable of sinning, had to pass. 
There arc persons who seem to think, because Christ 
actually did no sin, and because in His nature God and 
2 



26 The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 

man were joined, that there was no possibility of His sin« 
ning, that His innocence was secure by even more than 
divine help, — by the possession of a divine nature. But 
such an opinion though it may seem at first to exalt the 
glory of Christ is a mere inference of the reason and in- 
volves disbelief in the simple record of the gospel. Why 
was He tempted by a sagacious tempter if He could not by 
any possibility be led into evil ? And if He Himself knew 
that He could not sin, what could the transaction have 
been to Him but a mere formality ? How could He learn 
obedience by the things which He suffered if they could 
have no action on the strength of His obedience ? Or how 
is He an example for us if His temptation is an unreality ? 
No ! they dishonor Christ's work who think thus. "When 
He took on Him the form of a servant He became by His 
own will subject to everything which can affect human 
nature — to desires, wants, pains, sorrows, the hiding of 
God's face, the fear of a cruel death, and death itself — all 
of which must have been so many motives and trials of 
character. Faith receives the temptation, as it receives 
the ascription of divine and human attributes to Christ, on 
the testimony of revelation : it is not faith, but the want of 
it, which leads some to question the reality of the tempta- 
tion, because Christ stood thus alone in His nature. 

The next point to which I invite you is the person of 
the tempter. "Jesus was led into the wilderness to be 
tempted of the devil." It was not God who tried Him by 
suffering of body or mind, as He often tries His faithful 
servants ; but God left Him in the hands of an enemy, 
whose aim and hope it was to lead Him into sin. Nor 
could His own sinless soul present inducements to evil to 
itself, which it must have done had there been concerned 
in the transaction no personal tempter. For He was not 
merely innocent, but holy and perfectly holy, with the 
confirmed character and habits of nearly thirty years, — 
how then could His own trains of thought, which contained 



The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 27 

no admixture of sin, originate suggestions to sin. There 
was then present in this scene a person who united malig- 
nant desires with knowledge of man and powers of per- 
suasion, who tempted Adam, and would with the more 
reason be ready to tempt Christ. 

But in what form, it may be asked, did this tempter 
place himself in the way of Jesus ? Did he keep to his 
spiritual incorporeal nature, or take a body, and become 
visible to eyes of flesh ? Was the temptation transacted 
before the mind of Christ, or was its sphere more outward, 
concerned with bodily phenomena and human language? 
The iirst impressions which a reader would draw from the 
narrative undoubtedly favor its being understood in a 
literal sense, that Jesus was literally carried through the 
air to the pinnacle of the temple, and to an exceeding 
high mountain. In this light, no doubt, has the transac- 
tion been commonly regarded. Nevertheless, such a way 
of understanding the narrative involves us in serious per- 
plexities. For, in the first place, the agency of Satan 
elsewhere, in the New Testament, is that of a spiritual 
being, and, so far as I am aware, corporeal form is never 
ascribed to him. In the second place, suppose the Saviour 
to be carried to an exceeding high mountain, yet the 
spherical form of the earth would allow the eye to take 
in but a very minute portion of the kingdoms of the 
world and of their glory. We must, then, either dilute 
the narrative, as many do, by understanding these expres- 
sions in a hyperbolical sense of the little tract of country 
around Palestine, or must resort to a second miracle, in 
order to conceive of the broad earth spread outward and 
upward before our Lord's eye. What need, then, of the 
high mountain, and why might not the same sight be 
obtained without leaving the wilderness? In the third 
place, it is noteworthy that the narrative makes no men- 
tion of the return of Jesus from the temple and from the 
mountain, just as if, in some sense, He had gone there 



28 Tlw Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness 

while he remained in the desert in another. And, in the 
fourth place, if the temptation was addressed to the bodily 
senses of the Lord, it loses its insidious character, and 
becomes easier to be resisted. I am constrained, there- 
fore, to believe that the transaction was a spiritual one, 
a conflict between light and darkness in the region of the 
mind, in which a real tempter assailed Christ, not through 
His eyes and ears, but directly through His feelings and 
imagination. The scenes passed before His soul in vision, 
as we commonly call it, that is, in such an excited state 
of the conceptive faculty as gives the impression of 
reality to objects of thought. After the same manner, 
the prophets of the Old Testament passed through events 
in vision, of which they speak as we should speak of 
realities. Thus Jeremiah must have been in prophetic 
vision when he took the linen girdle to Euphrates to hide 
it there and went again in quest of it, as also when he 
took the cup of wrath from God's hand and gave it to the 
nations to drink. So too Ezekiel was transported from 
Chaldea to Jerusalem in that remarkable vision, the nar- 
rative of which occupies the chapters of his prophecies 
from the eighth to the eleventh. Hosea, again, it is com- 
monly believed, narrates only a symbolical vision, where 
he speaks of himself as marrying an adulteress at the 
command of God. The martyr Stephen, also full of the 
Holy Ghost, saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God, 
not in bodily shape, but in a form presented to the mind's 
eye, and yet expressive of a great reality. And so too the 
Apostle Paul may have been in vision, as he himself 
allows us to suppose, when he was caught up to the third 
heaven. It is not unlikely that the first readers of the 
Gospel, who were familiar with the prophetic state and 
language, put no wrong interpretation on the narrative in 
cases like these. 

If, now, the Scriptures allow us to interpret the events 
of the temptation in this way, we can see that greater 



The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 29 

strength is thereby given to the suggestions of Satan than 
if they had been addressed to the bodily organs. The 
power over the mind of a highly endowed being through 
the imagination, may indefinitely exceed that which is ex- 
erted through the sight. Multitudes have been seduced 
by that faculty, which paints absent or distant objects in 
colors of its own, whom no beauty or pleasantness lying in 
objects of sight could have led into sin. The world of 
imagination is more fascinating to their elevated mind 
than this outward world with all its shows and riches. 
The phantom, which has something heavenly in it, cheats 
and betrays them, while they turn aside from the obvious 
snares of visible things. If then, before the mind of Christ 
the tempter laid a map of the outstretched world, more 
gorgeously beautiful, more charming to the imagination, 
than the sights of luxury and pomp of power in the 
Roman empire, we may suppose that the temptation was 
thus greatly enhanced, and became more difficult to be 
contended with. 

But we pass on from this point, to a more important 
and indeed to an essential remark, that the temptations 
were intended not for Jesus in His nature as a man, hut for 
Jesus in His official station as the Messiah. God was not 
putting it to the test, whether a certain good man or good 
prophet would yield to evil or conquer it, but whether 
Jesus was qualified for His office — whether that man whom 
he had severed from the rest of mankind by a wondrous 
birth and a union with the divine nature, and who yet 
stood forth in perfect freedom as a man — whether He 
would remain true to the spiritual idea of the Messiah, or 
would fall below it under temptation. Nor was the 
tempter in this case anxious simply to lead a good man 
into sin, but he was striking at the root of salvation ; his 
aim was to undermine the principles of the kingdom of 
heaven, to lead the Christ, if possible, by some subtle way 
into conduct inconsistent with the office to which He had 



30 The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 

been chosen, and which He had freely accepted. This 
thought is the key to the story of the temptation. It ex- 
plains why the temptation occurred when it did, at the 
commencement of Christ's public work, and shows the 
greatness of the crisis. The question whether Jesus would 
be made to adopt the worldly idea of the Messiah's king- 
dom was one of life and death for mankind. It may be 
added that the tempter's formula of address, " If thou be 
the Son of God," shows that the stress of the suggestion 
bore upon His consciousness of sustaining that relation to 
God, and not upon His character as a man. The problem 
to be solved was how He would sustain the Messianic 
office. Let us bear this in mind while we look at the 
three several temptations. 

Of the first St. Matthew thus speaks (iv. 2-4) : "And 
when he had fasted forty days and forty nights he was 
afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came 
to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that 
these stones be made bread. But he answered, Man 
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God." 

It is plain that these suggestions contain an appeal to 
the innocent desire for food, which now, by long fasting, 
had become extreme. But the strength of them lay in the 
ease with which Jesus, as the Son of God, conscious of 
power over nature, could work a miracle in His own behalf. 
Perhaps, too, the words contain something of a challenge 
to put forth that power, and convey a lurking doubt 
whether it really existed. "Can it be," the tempter might 
say, "that thou art endowed with such power and authority, 
whilst yet thou art suffering the severest hunger? Is it the 
will of thy Father, the bountiful Lord over nature, that 
His own Son should lack the gifts which are spread before 
the lowest and the poorest ? Has not power over nature 
been given thee, if thou hast it, in order to relieve 
the distresses of mankind ? Why not, then, relieve thine 



The lemptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 31 

own? What merit is there in continuing hungry when 
thou may est, without harming any man, satisfy thy wants? 
Is not the starving man bound to use the innocent powers 
which God has given him to keep off death ? Or if he 
accepts the morsel offered by compassion, why shouldst 
thou not regard it as the compassion of God that thou 
shouldst use thy miraculous power for thine own de- 
liverance." 

The answer to the tempter contains a refusal to break 
the fetters of dependence upon God's ordinary providence. 
God had sent Jesus into this condition of distress, as He 
sent the Jews into the wilderness, and could sustain Him 
as He did them, by extraordinary means of his own. Jesus 
was content to put Himself in the hands of God and await 
the issue. 

Here the mind naturally asks — and shows the subtlety 
of the temptation by the question — Why our Lord felt 
Himself bound to endure the pangs of violent hunger 
when the relief lay within His reach. Why should He 
feed the five thousand by miracle, we ask, and not provide 
food for Himself? Did not Elijah partake of the widow's 
cruse and of the meal which He multiplied? Suppose 
that one of us could save himself from starvation by a 
miracle, is there any reason why he should not do it ? 

The solution of the difficulty lies mainly in the fact, that 
Christ was tempted as the Messiah. An ordinary man, or 
a mere prophet, invested with a special, supernatural 
power, might, for aught we can see, save himself from dis- 
tress by such agency. But it became the Christ, the 
founder of a spiritual kingdom, to whom supernatural 
power was natural, not to place Himself or His followers 
beyond the reach of pain or sorrow. Had He procured 
food for Himself by miracle, He would have introduced a 
principle tending to destroy His kingdom, or wholly to 
change its nature — just that which the tempter wanted. 
For if extreme hunger might be relieved, :so might that 



32 The Temptation oj Christ in the Wilderness. 

which was not extreme : so might thirst, and cold, and all 
the ills of poverty : so might affliction be prevented and 
reproach avoided. And if this might happen in His case, 
it might in the case of all His followers. Thns His rule and 
example would have founded a kingdom of earthly ease 
and comfort, in lieu of one where the hard blows of trial 
must be met in the spirit of trust and resignation. 

And again, had Christ followed the suggestions of the 
tempter, He could not have taken on Him the work of our 
salvation. The form of a servant, which He freely as- 
sumed, involved subjection to all the physical laws which 
control our race, and the endurance of all sufferings which 
the Father should lay upon Him. But if, by His inherent 
power, He had now relieved His own hunger, He would 
have escaped from the form of a servant, and even from 
subjection to the divine will ; and, on the same principle, 
He never could have been obedient -to death — even the 
death of the cross. 

We pass on to the second temptation, as it stands in the 
order of St. Matthew's narrative, or the third in St. 
Luke's, and of which the former Evangelist speaks as fol- 
lows (iv. 5, 7) : " Then the devil taketh Him up into the 
holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple, 
and saith unto Him, If thou be the Son of God cast thy- 
self down ; for it is written He shall give His angels charge 
concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee 
up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 
Jesus saith unto him, It is written thou shalt not tempt 
the Lord thy God." 

Here we make a remark in passing on the disagreement 
upon the order of events between the two gospels. Neither 
Evangelist in his narrative follows a strict chronological 
order, so that differences of this kind, which are not of un- 
frequent occurrence, ought not to surprise us. But the 
narrative of St. Matthew, as it is fresher and more artless 



The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 33 

than St. Luke's, so also justifies its superior accuracy in 
respect to the sequence of the temptations by a psycholo- 
gical probability. It was natural that a real tempter, 
upon discovering the great strength of trust which Jesus 
felt, should now endeavor to succeed in his plans by seek- 
ing to pervert that trust, by forcing it out of its proper 
channel into that of presumption. The first two tempta- 
tions therefore, as given by St. Matthew, have an inward 
connection, one with the other. The trust of Jesus in His 
Father naturally suggested to the evil power that He 
might be successfully tempted to unauthorized confidence. 
Might not He who would put forth no supernatural 
power even to relieve His. own extreme hunger, be led to 
think that God.wOuld suspendrtl>e^ours3 of nature at His 
desire ancL^'rc>Hi's sake, when en^^ecLin the divine ser- 
vice? Tip argument, hiten&ea to produce such causeless 
trust, is cfrawn fr|^$ignme]t$#i Psalm, and may be thus 
expressed^ 'jEJie true servants of Gdcfc^fijoy His peculiar 
protection, a^MBo^s^ar4s.rtK>se w^O*ferast in Him from all 
evil. More than'al^olhe^TB^yst thou, as His Son, cal- 
culate on the special interpositions of His providence. 
Throw thyself down, in token of being the Messiah, from 
the pinnacle of the temple, and make trial of what He will 
do for thee. 

The reason why the temple was selected as the scene of 
this temptation lay in its being the spot of greatest resort, 
where through the day crowds of Jews would be wit- 
nesses of whatever might be remarkable and attractive. 
To see a man throw himself unharmed from a lofty place 
of the sacred building, and then claim to be the Messiah, 
could not fail to draw around him many adherents from 
among those who were expecting the Lord, the Messenger 
of the Covenant, to come suddenly to His temple. What 
could gain greater credence for the Messiah than such an 

attestation from God, at the thronged and hallowed 
9* 



34 The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 

centre of His religion. How conspicuous the proof, from 
such a transaction, how quick the admission of it, saving 
the necessity of long years of contention in comparative 
obscurity against prejudice and malice! 

But to the sophistry of the tempter Christ had a ready 
reply. " It is written thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
God," that is, " I may not, because entitled to His protec- 
tion, appeal to it against the laws of His providence, to 
rescue me from dangers into which I have entered unbid- 
den." As thus viewed, our Lord's reply is given in the 
same spirit with His former one during the first temptation. 
He subjected Himself freely to physical law, and His Mes- 
siahship depended on His self-chosen humiliation. He 
could therefore, in consistency with His great object here 
below, no more supersede physical law or seek to have it 
superseded in order to secure advantages to Himself than 
He could escape from moral control. When He took upon 
Him the form of a servant He entered into this relation 
r,o divine providence, that He should be treated as other 
men are treated, should have no mark of favor shown Him 
inconsistent with His station ; nay, that if God willed, He 
might frown upon and desert Him. After this it would 
not be confidence, but presumption, to look for miraculous 
interpositions on His behalf. If He might not work a mira- 
cle for Himself to ward off the force of the natural order of 
things, so too He might not presume upon the help of God 
on His behalf against the laws of His providence. Other- 
wise a general rule would be established by which His life 
would cease to be one of humiliation. 

And if we admit that Christ resisted the suggestion of 
the tempter, because it would lead Him to an ostentatious 
and superficial way of making good His claim to be the 
Messiah, we have fresh proof of His wisdom and of the 
justness of His conception of His office. It might seem a 
rapid and certain method of proving that He was the Son 



The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 35 

of God if He were to make a demonstration of Himself to 
the public eye, if He should secure notoriety by some great 
deed. So thought His brethren : If thou do these things 
show thyself to the world. So have false Christs and 
false prophets and fanatics very generally thought — that 
some great spectacle before the face of the world ought 
to inaugurate their mission. But our Lord's moral in- 
stinct and His true idea of the Messiah's office brought 
Him into complete harmony with that law of the divine 
government, by which truth comes before men in an un- 
pretending shape, and evidence is never given in such 
amount as to force assent, but always leaves the prejudiced 
and the corrupt free to deny its force. If we look through 
the Gospels, we shall find the same consistent principle 
running through all the miracles of Christ. He wrought 
not many mighty works in his own country because of 
their unbelief. He would give no sign to a wicked 
and adulterous generation, save the sign of Jonas. 
He rather shunned observation than coveted it. But 
when he saw that a feeble, incipient faith could be 
strengthened by miracles, or when humanity called on 
Him to put forth extraordinary powers, then, however 
obscure the scene or the person to be aided, was His time 
to interpose. 

Of the third and last temptation, St. Matthew gives us 
the following account : " Again the devil taketh Him up 
into an exceedingly high mountain, and showeth Him all 
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them ; and 
saith unto Him, All these things will I give thee if thou 
wilt fall down and worship me. Then Jesus saith unto 
him, Get thee hence, Satan ; for it is written, thou shalt 
worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou 
serve." 

The general purpose of this temptation, is obvious. It 
was an endeavor to divert Jesus from the aim of sorting 
up a spiritual kingdom, and to induce Him to establish 



36 The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 

such a one as most of His countrymen were wishing for 
and expecting. It sought also to lead Him to the use of 
questionable and unauthorized means of building up His 
kingdom, by which He would secure the co-operation of 
Worldly powers and avoid most of the obstacles which 
interfered with His success. 

Such was the plan of the temptation, which was 
thwarted by our Lord's just idea of the kingdom of 
heaven, and by His fixed decision to be loyal to God in 
the attempt to set up such a kingdom. There are, how- 
ever, several difficulties in explaining this temptation, 
which demand our notice. First, why should this temp- 
tation come last, when at first blush it seems the easiest of 
all to be resisted ? And again, the boldness and almost 
impudence of the suggestion to pay homage to Satan, 
seem unsuited to the character of a sagacious tempter. 

We may take off somewhat from the edge of these dif- 
ficulties, by observing first that it could not have been the 
love of power in Jesus, to which the tempter looked for his 
support. If the love of power is a universal principle of 
our nature, we may say that it was potentially in Him who 
was like his brethren. And yet I cannot conceive of it 
as having any strength whatever in His breast. His habits 
of holy consecration and submission must long before 
have made it impotent. It would have been folly in the 
tempter to appeal to it, as a principle of any strength. 
What was it then, of which the temptation was expected 
to lay hold ? It was the natural and instinctive desire to 
take an easy road to the kingdom by the means of 
worldly power, to avoid the humiliation, hardships and 
agonizing death that lay in the distance before Him if He 
formed no connection with influences which control the 
earth. It was to conquer without hard fighting, to reign 
in glory without conquering, to realize at once the pro- 
phetic visions of a world-wide dominion, without fulfilling 



The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 37 

the twenty-second Psalm and the fifty-third chapter of 
Isaiah. 

The question was not whether the kingdom to be secured 
would be one of righteousness, — that was a settled point; 
but whether the means of securing it might not properly 
pass round the opposition and the suffering which Christ 
saw in thought before Him. In an exalted worldly posi- 
tion, gained by a single formality of homage, what a 
power might be wielded by Him for the good of man ! 
what a new order of ages might begin under His sway ! 
what reforms might proceed from His wisdom and illus- 
trious example ! His choice of means, however, for se- 
curing His kingdom would in the end amount to a choice 
between two kingdoms, the one, severely spiritual, intro- 
duced by moral and religious forces only, the other becom- 
ing worldly by its alliance with the world of outward 
influence and temporal glory. The instinctive shrinking 
from harm and difficulty, which belongs to us all, would 
lead Him to choose the worldly way of doing good, would 
prejudice His mind in favor of the easier and quicker 
method. But He held on to His spiritual conception of His 
office, kept His obedience, and triumphed. Thus the dread 
of pain and of difficulty as well as the prospect of success 
in another direction gave strength to a temptation where 
the mere love of power was powerless. 

We only add in regard to the proposition that He should 
worship the tempter, that it must be regarded as an act 
not of religious worship, but of respect and homage. Yet 
Jesus saw that if the formality of homage were paid, it 
would involve subservience to the powers of evil, aud be- 
come disobedience to God. Thereupon He says, " Thou 
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
serve." 

The narrative of the temptation presents the tempter 
to us as sagacious and crafty, but yet as not having fully 
penetrated into the nature and character of Christ. 



38 The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 

He approached Christ in the belief that he was capable 
of taking false views of his office, through which he might 
be led into sin. He does not solicit him with those vulgar 
baits, by which sensuous, sinful imaginations and wills 
are drawn like the temptations offered in vision to St. 
Jerome, but makes suggestions of a kind such as to lead 
Jesus into conduct which, on a certain theory of the Mes- 
sianic office, would be right enough, but on a certain 
other theory would show him to have wholly swerved from 
the idea. The question to be settled by trial was, whether 
our Lord's view of his office would be modified by an 
impression of the difficulties that he would of necessity 
encounter, or, in other words, whether temptation would 
blind him, and so lead him astray in regard to the course 
of life which God's Messiah must take. The tempter 
then, understood Christ, and did not understand him. 
Pie must have supposed th^t there was a possibility of his 
sinning, or the temptation was idle ; and this supposition 
was true. He must have wisely regarded the beginning 
of Christ's public ministry to be the best time for present- 
ing blinding influences to his mind and soul. And yet, it 
would seem, he could not have had a complete view of 
the grandeur of the Messiah as a redeeming world wide 
Saviour ; otherwise he would have seen the almightiness 
of God to be pledged to such a work, and all resistance 
to be of no effect. He knew more of Christ than the 
Jews did, but less than revelation has disclosed to us. 
Just so much knowledge accords with what the Scriptures 
say of the angels, that until Christ ascended on high they 
did not fully comprehend the plan of redemption. Nor 
can we doubt, if there be a personal tempter, that many 
of the followers of Christ actually foil him, in which 
cases, as in the temptation of the Master, he is ignorant 
of the result, and, perhaps, like other bad beings, blinded 
against the probabilities of things by his own deceptive 
hopes. 



TJie 'Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 39 

Another remark which we desire to make is, that the 
narrative, as interpreted, shows the subtlety and insinu- 
ating character of the temptation. The acts to which 
Christ was solicited were not sins, so much as misjudg- 
ments in regard to the means to be used for gaining the 
highest and noblest ends. And these misjudgments 
would consist, not in the use of means plainly and boldly 
sinful, but of such as involved a departure from the true 
idea of the Messiah's earthly mission. To remain hungry 
was no virtue, and to relieve one's own hunger by miracle 
was not necessarily a sin. To give proof of Messiahship 
by the miracle of falling from a lofty part of the temple 
was not, as a matter of course, an act of self-display, nor 
in itself more a sin than Elijah's proceedings at Carmel, 
when he put God to the test whether he would show, by 
the fire consuming the water around the altar, that he 
was God in Israel. So, too, to make an alliance with 
earthly powers for the advantage of the kingdom of God 
may well seem no compromise of principle, if the mind 
of the friend of God remains true to its work. No selfish 
feeling need be involved in such conduct, except that 
which consists in taking an easier instead of a harder 
road. The sin in these cases is not apparent, and it needs 
a healthy conscience, an unwarped judgment, a soul sin- 
cere in all its parts, to be equal to crises like these. 

How many followers of Christ, great in name, have 
failed on just such occasions. Who among the sons of 
men is fit to be trusted with miraculous powers without 
measure, which he can use when and as He will? There- 
fore we will forever praise our Lord, that he stood amid 
these insidious suggestions, when we fall before bold and 
obvious temptations, leading us even to acts of obvious sin. 
And we will pray Him to keep His people from leaving His 
path ; so that as He was in this world, they may have the 
quickest moral perception, the absence of all worldly 
policy, the principle to use gifts and powers not for them • 



40 The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 

selves, not in shortening or smoothing processes of duty, 
but according to his divine pattern. 

The narrative of the temptation, finally, as thus ex- 
plained, shows itself to have been no myth, or invention of 
the early Church. The mythical theory draws its general 
fo rce from an unscientific assumption that there can be no 
such things as miracle and revelation. In the case before 
us, its special arguments might be, that Jesus was tempted 
like Adam, that He was forty days in the wilderness as 
Moses was forty days on Sinai, and Elijah the same time 
on his journey to the same mountain chain ; and that a 
part of the narrative, His transportation through the air, 
was ghostly and marvellous, rather than in accordance 
with the sobriety of ordinary miracles. The last argument 
has been already met by a different interpretation. As 
for the others, which have- little intrinsic strength, it is 
enough to say, that if Christ was the Messiah, there are 
good reasons why He should be subject to trial at the 
outset of His work. The temptation is, indeed, no indepen- 
dent proof that He was what He claimed to be, but like 
His miraculous conception, it is in harmony with His na- 
ture and His office. 

But it is more important to remark, that the narrative 
is too refined and too full of a somewhat hidden, but con- 
summate wisdom, to grow out of the imaginings of the 
early Church. It is no rude picture of assaults which 
might befall a holy man in solitude, but an intellectual and 
moral struggle, which put it to the proof whether Christ 
would be true to the spiritual idea of the Messiah. It in- 
volves a conception of the Messiah's kingdom which the 
early Church did not entertain until some time after the 
death of our Lord ; how then could it be elaborated by 
crude Galilean disciples of Christ, whose views were full 
of that earthly mixture which the narrative condemns ? 
It contains, too, we are forced to think, a subtlety of moral 
discrimination which was far beyond that age, and beyond 



The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 41 



any age, until it had become enlightened by the Light of 
the Word. I should sooner say, that Christ Himself in- 
vented it, and gave it to some disciple as embodying in an 
allegorical form the results of His experience. But if He 
was the Messiah, the temptation is a true narrative. If 
He was not, He could not have devised a narrative like 
this, because He could not have understood what pertained 
to the work of a spiritual Redeemer. 

And now to all the tempted, to all who are inclined to 
gain power by questionable means, to all who can profit 
for the moment by a departure from the line of principle, 
to all Christians who are tainted with a spirit of worldly 
policy, and desert the Master while they profess to be 
doing service for Him, I commend this story of the tempta- 
tion. Let us all use it as a means of keeping ourselves in 
the path of unswerving Christian integrity, that by the 
help of the Master's trials, we may overcome, and be par- 
takers of His purity and of His glory. 



SERMON III. 

CHRIST CHARGED WITH BEING BESIDE HIMSELF. 

Mark iii. 21. And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay 
hold on him; for they said he is beside himself. 

It appears from the narrative, of which this verse is a 
part, that Jesus had already excited the malignity of the 
Pharisees on account of a cure performed on the Sabbath, 
and that they had combined with their enemies, the Hero- 
dians, to compass His destruction. Upon this He withdrew 
to a more secluded place, but could not be hid, for His 
fame as a teacher and a healer of diseases had already 
reached beyond Galilee in every direction. After per- 
forming many cures among the multitude who pursued Him 
into His retirement, He withdrew again to a mountainous 
district, and took care that only certain persons, His 
disciples in the proper sense who were drawm to Him as 
their spiritual teacher, should know whither He had be- 
taken Himself. The night, it would appear, was spent in 
prayer to God. The ensuing morning He organized His 
church by appointing the twelve apostles, and perhaps 
delivered the Sermon on the Mount during the same day. 
Descending again from the hill-country He entered, it is 
said, into a house, that is, He took up His abode for the 
time in the city of Capernaum. The people again throng 
around Him, some to be cured or have their friends cured 
of outward maladies, some to hear the healing words with 
which He accompanied His works of love. 

It was at this time when the court of the house, with the 

hall of entrance, was filled full with eager listeners and 

with people ill of every disease, that His friends went out to 

lay hold on Him, for they said, " He is beside Himself." 

42 



Christ charged with being beside Himself. 43 

They went out, perhaps, from Nazareth, where their home 
was, to the neighboring city of Capernaum, for the purpose 
of seizing and securing Him, on the ground that, according 
to their judgment or their fears, He was not in His right 
mind. As we learn from the end of the chapter they 
could not on account of the crowd enter the door ; they 
send a messenger therefore to call Him out, that thus they 
may attain their object. Our Saviour knew intuitively 
what their design was, and reproved it as well as conveyed 
instruction to the bystanders by the words, "Who is my 
mother and my brethren? — Behold my mother and my 
brethren ! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the 
same is my brother, and my sister and mother." 

The question now may fairly be asked what led His re- 
latives to the belief or suspicion, that our Lord was dis- 
ordered in mind, and to the marvellous resolution to 
attempt to lay hold on Him and keep Him in confinement. 
The brevity of the record does not enable us to answer 
this question with confidence, and yet it supplies us with 
several answers, one or all of which may render this con- 
duct less remarkable. 

First, we may suppose that our Lord's relatives regarded 
His conduct as very strange and unaccountable ; that He 
worked, or was reputed to work, miracles which drew 
crowds around Him, and declared that He was introducing 
the kingdom of heaven, while He yet shrank away from 
publicity and avoided the necessary consequences of being 
regarded as the Messiah. There may have been here to 
their minds, as yet involved in unbelief, an inconsistency 
in His conduct, which they could account for only on the 
theory that He was not what He claimed to be, but was 
laboring under a delusion of mind. Such are their feel- 
ings towards Christ, as represented to us in the seventh 
chapter of John's Gospel. "His brethren said unto him," 
on the approach of the feast of tabernacles, " depart hence, 
and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the 



44 Christ charged with being beside Himself. 

works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth 
any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known 
openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the 
world. For," adds the apostle, " neither did his brethren 
believe on him." They could not reconcile His policy 
with their idea of the Messiah, and of the pomp and splen- 
dor with which that office should be ushered in, and there- 
fore explained His conduct, which they knew Him too well 
to impute to ambition or intentional deception, by the 
workings of a diseased mind. 

Or, again, we may more rationally suppose that they 
thought Him beside Himself because He seemed to them to 
be throwing away His life. The Pharisees, they may have 
learnt as we know it, were already laying plots for His de- 
struction. He was moreover giving Himself up to the 
good of the crowds which followed Him with an assiduity 
and a self-sacrifice which were likely to put His life in jeo- 
pardy. He appeared to them unaware of His danger and 
madly regardless of health and safety. 

Or, to make one supposition more, the opinion which 
the Pharisees sought to diffuse, that He worked miracles 
by demoniac agency, may have influenced them, coming 
as it did from the teachers of the people. He could not 
be the Messiah, and yet He worked miracles. He could 
not be the Messiah, for how could an obscure Galilean, 
one of their own humble relatives, found the glorious 
kingdom of heaven, or take such ways to found it as 
Jesus was taking ? He must therefore derive His super- 
human power of casting out demons from Beelzebub. Pie 
must, as the Jews at Jerusalem afterwards said, have a 
devil and be mad. 

Thus we see that unbelief lay at the bottom of this 
conduct of Christ's relatives. And it is worthy of notice 
that in striving to explain His conduct in their state of 
unbelief, they impute it to no sinful or selfish motive, but 
to derangement of mind. They show herein a persua- 



Christ charged with being beside Himself. 45 

sion, founded on acquaintance with His character, that no 
such motive could be discovered in the Saviour's life. 

It is very remarkable, it is even startling, that among 
these relatives of Christ, who came to lay hands on Him 
as being insane, His mother is found. How shall we ex- 
plain this conduct on the part of one who knew His mira- 
culous conception, who had seen His perfect humanity in 
childhood and maturer years, who without question be- 
lieved in Him and hoped in Him ? 

The extreme brevity of the narrative leaves as here 
again to conjecture. We may suppose that what is im- 
puted to the kinsmen or family of Christ is spoken of 
them as a body from which Mary is to be excepted. She 
may have" accompanied her unbelieving friends without 
participating in their feelings, rather to act as a mediator 
between them and Jesus than to carry out in any degree 
their views. 

But I am quite willing to concede that a cloud of un- 
belief flitted over her mind ; that as John the Baptist, in 
a moment of disheartening doubt, sent his disciples, to the 
Lord with the inquiry, " Art thou he that should come or 
do we look for another," — an inquiry which shows at 
once his confidence and his want of confidence — so she, 
when she saw her Son taking a course unlike what she 
had attributed to the Messiah, may have been, for a time, 
overcome by her perplexities, and have not known what 
to think of Him. Are such doubts strange guests at times, 
even by the side of confirmed faith ? Pie will not say so 
who knows what conflicts are going on in many serious 
minds, nay, what conflicts may arise in many Christian 
minds, until faith has won a permanent victory. How 
many minds have keeitated before the amazing doctrine 
of the Incarnation, as if such an interposition and 
presence in our world were incredible ; how many have 
modified, or rather mutilated the Bible, so as to save tha 
supernatural, and yet reject the divine in Christ; how 



46 Christ charged with being beside Himself. 

many have stumbled and fallen over Christ manifest in 
the flesh; how many have swum to a settled landing- 
place across the billowing waves of doubt which threat- 
ened to engulf them ! Was it strange that some kindred 
struggles should agitate the soul of Mary, if she were at 
once honest and in a degree unenlightened ? 

I will only add on this point, that however we explain 
Mary's participation in the design of her kinsmen, she is 
included in what is a virtual censure on the part of our 
Lord. He neither goes out to meet her and her com- 
panions, nor admits them into His presence. He exclaims, 
that His nearest of kin are the children of God, and asks, 
"Who is my mother and my brethren?" It is thus 
remarkable, that in the only two instances, until the cruci- 
fixion, where Mary figures in the Gospel — the marriage at 
Cana, and the passage before us — she appears, in order to 
be reproved by the Saviour, and to be placed, as far as 
the mere maternal relation is concerned, below obedient 
servants of God. These passages must be regarded as 
protests laid up in store against the heathenish eminence 
which the Roman church assigns to Mary, and especially 
against that newly established dogma of her being without 
sin from her birth, which they so signally contradict. 

But while Christ was thus charged with losing the 
guidance of right reason, what had He been doing ? As- 
suming that Mark follows the order of time, and confining 
ourselves to the events of the few hours before, we notice, 
first, that He had passed the whole night, before His return 
to Capernaum, in prayer to God. Being about, on the 
next day, to set on foot great measures, He separated Him- 
self from the crowd which His fame had gathered, and 
even from His own peculiar followers, in order to commune 
with Infinite Reason and Infinite Love. On the lonely 
mountain, with only the stars for witnesses, He strengthened 
the powers of His soul, and found a refreshment better 
than that of sleep, in long and close intercourse with His 



Christ charged with being beside Himself. 47 

Father. Of this, indeed, His friends could have known 
nothing, but it was a natural expression of the piety which 
shone through His whole life. Was there implied in this 
any loss of reason ? Who would not reasonably go to the 
ends of the earth, if thus He might experience one hour's 
communion, such as Christ had in blessedness and purity, 
with the Father ? 

Next we notice, that when it was day He set apart the 
twelve apostles. No step was taken by him, during His 
ministry, more important than this in its bearings on the 
future progress of His kingdom. In fact, if we except the 
two sacraments, this was the only institution which he 
ever adopted. Its wisdom was demonstrated by the result. 
The Apostles remained, after His death, as the authority 
in the Church. They preached the doctrine of Christ. They 
testified as eye-witnesses to His resurrection. They arranged 
the order of the gatherings of believers. They transmitted 
the history of their Lord to coming ages. The consum- 
mate wisdom which appeared in this institution, at once so 
simple and so efficacious, showed the reach of mind, the 
foreseeing reason of its founder. 

And if, in the third place, as Luke seems to declare, the 
Sermon on the Mount — whether a part or the whole of 
what Matthew gives us — was delivered the same day, we 
have in this, too, a proof of the highest exercise of reason. 
This man, whom His kinsmen pronounced beside Himself, 
had just been destroying the imperfect system of morals 
which Jewish wisdom had erected, and had built up a new 
code, which has reigned through all the ages since ; He had 
announced principles which philosophers, whether believers 
in Him or not, have united in admiring ; and which, if we 
Jook at their influence on opinions or on practice, entitle 
Him to the name of a moral legislator for mankind. 

And if, finally, we take into view His deeds of love 
when He came down from the mountain, how lie gave 
Himself up to works and words of healing, how He bore 



48 Christ charged with being beside Himself. 

with patience the importunity of the throng, how He en- 
dured fatigue and hunger for their sakes — not having 
room even to eat bread — we have another trait of a life 
in which reason and goodness dwell together. 

Having thus considered the imputation cast on our 
Saviour by his relatives that He was out of His right mind, 
and shown how absurdly false it was by His conduct at 
the time, we proceed, in the third place, to derive some 
lessons from this part of the Gospel history. 

I. And, first, we learn, from the fact that neither the 
Pharisees nor Christ's near relatives understood His charac- 
ter, how difficult bad men, and oftentimes imperfect good 
men must find it to comprehend the aims and plans of a 
person of uncommon goodness. 

A person whose mind is not darkened by sin to a de- 
gree rarely occurring under the light of the Gospel, will 
readily admit, in the abstract, the leading obligations of 
practical religion and morality. He will confess that men 
ought to devote themselves to the service of God in the 
spirit of supreme, self-sacrificing love, and to the welfare 
of mankind, without looking at their own ease, comfort, 
or reputation. He will even approve or condemn persons 
living in a past age by such a standard. 

But when men come to judge of measures and of prin- 
ciples, as they appear in the life of men, they will be apt 
to fall into one of the two following faults : 

First, if they are low-minded and selfish themselves, 
they will impute the best conduct of the best men to mo- 
tives as base as their own. This is, in part, a simple 
application of the rules derived from experience to a new 
case. The man is conscious of nothing noble or exalted : 
he sees in himself no impulse, no capacity to act under 
the sway of the better class of motives, such as zeal for 
God and love to man. All his friends, with whom fellow- 
feeling unites him, have the same low standard, and must 
take the same view of the conduct of others. The opinion 



Christ charged with being beside Himself. 49 

in the whole society will be, that all men have the same 
governing principles at bottom ; that benevolent concern 
for the welfare of men is either a pretense or the weakness 
of a character peculiarly constituted ; that the semblance 
of religious zeal is hypocrisy. Within the experience of 
the whole society no character has risen above the vulgar 
level of selfishness. Within their observation, no conduct 
has occurred which cannot somehow be accounted for on 
the meanest principles. Thus we see that the selfish can- 
not comprehend disinterested goodness, that the impure 
cannot believe in purity and chastity, that low-minded 
politicians believe that all men can be "bought, that un- 
scrupulous merchants hold that every man will violate the 
law of usury or the laws for the revenue, if sure of im- 
punity. Our judgments find it hard to rise above the 
level of our character. We bring men down to our own 
principles, if we cannot raise ourselves, in our conceit and 
imagination, up to theirs. 

This philosophy of experience, if so it may be called, 
commends and insinuates itself into the mind by the com- 
fort it imparts. If there is no more exalted standard of 
character than that low one which such persons adopt, 
there is no occasion for self-condemnation ; they can walk 
with the head erect, and look on the noblest souls as their 
equals ; they need feel no impulse to reform, and painful 
aspirations for something beyond their reach are repressed. 
Such self-complacent comfort can stand the attacks of 
abstract moral or religious convictions with tolerable 
security. But when a life shines before it, constructed on 
other principles, a life that commands respect, and tells 
"how awful goodness is," then this poor pride of character 
quails and fee^s its beggarliness, and gives place to self- 
reproach and self-contempt. To avoid the beginning of 
such a change of feeling, the life of the good must be 
interpreted amiss, and reduced below its real standard. 

Was it then to be wondered at that goodness like that 
3 



50 Christ charged with being beside Himself. 

of Jesus was misunderstood and maligned by Pharisees ? 
Was it strange that they who knew of nothing within 
their own experience but selfishness and hypocrisy, who 
would have been condemned at heart by the light of 
divine excellence like Christ's, should seek a solution of 
His wonder-working power in Satanic agency, — should 
call " the master of the house Beelzebub ?" 

But again, persons like the relatives of Christ, who 
have no especial prejudice to warp their judgment, nay, 
even good men, are liable to misunderstand an exalted 
character. The explanation here is in part the same as 
in the former case. Their own deficient standard, the 
opinion which controls the society in which they move, 
supplies them with the rule of estimating the conduct of 
others ; and they would be painfully reproved if they 
traced that conduct back to the highest principles of ac- 
tion. But their judgments are by no means so unjust as 
those of the prejudiced and the unprincipled. They do 
not put the worst interpretation on the best actions ; they 
are not apt to malign motives ; nor does their own con- 
sciousness carry them to the baser part of human nature, 
as explaining the lives of all men alike. But it is possi- 
ble for men, they find, to be one-sided, and to overlook 
considerations drawn from expediency or prudence. It is 
possible to seek to accomplish too much all at once 
without committing the seeds of effort to future time. It 
is possible in attempting to gain one good to throw away 
another, to sacrifice quiet unduly to truth, to undertake 
some reform without taking into account the opposition it 
may excite or even strengthen. Multitudes of mistakes, 
of failures, of abortive enterprises which delay the cause 
of humanity and virtue for a generation, do actually arise 
from sources like these. All admit this when they criti- 
cise other men's measures, and weigh other men's hopes. 
Now is it not quite possible, when a person of exalted 
self-sacrifice, of godlike love, of earnest zeal, appears 



Christ charged with being beside Himself. 51 

within the horizon of minds not in entire sympathy 
with him or unable to comprehend him, that they will 
apply these rules of judgment in his case? Does even true 
zeal for God of necessity exempt men from miscalcula- 
tions? May not such a man aim at that which is unat- 
tainable? May he not waste his powers with a self-consum- 
ing zeal ? May he not entertain hopes which are chimeri- 
cal, — or in short by some excess or defect may he not 
depart from the line of right reason ? 

Thus even good men may misunderstand and misinter- 
pret exalted virtue. But to this it should be added that 
our judgments concerning what is practicable — which 
must always influence our opinion of men — are in part of 
a subjective character ; they vary with our desires, with 
our feeling of the importance of the object, with our 
moral characteristics, as much as with our intellectual. 
It cannot fail then, that measures which an earnest, self- 
sacrificing, godly man regards as practicable, must appear 
to a person of an opposite nature to be just the reverse, 
and to indicate a want of sound judgment or even of 
sound reason. 

Thus a man needs to be thoroughly good himself, if he 
would comprehend and do justice to those who are truly 
good. It is not enough that a man has fine powers of 
mind and great practical discernment. His powers of 
mind will but quicken his ingenuity in finding causes for 
conduct which are not the true ones ; his discernment will 
discern impassable obstacles in the noblest effort, if he is 
not in sympathy with goodness. 

An illustration of what we have said may be found in 
the names of reproach which pass current among the un- 
thinking, and are applied oftentimes to the best of men. 
Christ, as we have seen, was no exception to this. The 
honored name of Christian was at first, it is probable, a 
term of contempt. Paul was a man that turned the 
world upside down. Puritan and Methodist were origi- 



52 Christ charged with being beside Himself. 

nated as words of scorn. All new enterprises of benevo- 
lence are exposed to the charge of enthusiasm or of fana- 
ticism. Whenever, in an ungodly community, some one 
breaks away from the bondage of reigning sin, the slaves 
of it call him mad. The friends of evangelical light in a 
part of Switzerland are now called momiers or hypocrites. 
The friends of oppressed men are among us stigmatized as 
fanatics. 

In a world where light and darkness are contending, 
we cannot do good prudently without having such missiles 
cast at us by the unthinking or the malevolent ; we can- 
not, as we are apt to do, pass the line of prudence, without 
furnishing them with a pretext for so treating us ; we 
cannot mingle resentment with our zeal without justifying 
them in their opprobrium not only of ourselves, but of 
our cause. 

But if we would be like Christ and do good service in 
the world, these names which are bugbears to many of 
the weak and lukewarm need not disturb us. A name of 
reproach is a rod of terror in the eyes of him who has 
no opinion on great questions, or no sympathy and 
power of generous emotion, or no courage and self-reli- 
ance. But if a man can rise to a higher level, reproach 
will only quicken him ; he will feel that to be hated by 
the weak and wicked is one proof that he is right. A 
man, whose soul was on the side of freedom in our strug- 
gle for independence, was not much frightened by being 
called a rebel; a man who is on the side of Christ will 
only feel the more deeply the need the world has of 
being made over, when he is called a fanatic. 

If we are misunderstood and depreciated let us remem- 
ber what happened to Christ. " Therefore the world know- 
eth us not," said the disciple of love, " because it knew 
Him not." If we are misunderstood because we are like 
Him, the better for us and the worse for them who wrongly 
judge us. 



Christ charged with being beside Himself. 53 

II. Christ by His life on earth has done much to show 
that true enthusiasm in the cause of God is truly reason- 
able. 

We have said that men, even good men, often fail to 
comprehend the noblest purposes and characters. But 
Christ by His glorious life on earth has enlightened man- 
kind in this respect. It is more difficult than it once was 
to deny the reality and the reasonableness of Christian 
virtue. A higher standard of judging and of acting has 
been set up in the mind of the world. 

Our Lord has not only purified man's abstract concep- 
tions of virtue, but He has taught us what to admire and 
approve in life and action. He has lived a life, the prin- 
ciples of which are an everlasting protest against the mis- 
judgments of men arising from their low standards. He 
has shown us the highest human excellence misunderstood^ 
the highest reason pronounced a derangement of reason, 
and thus has put us on our guard against similar mistakes. 
He has shown us that men with far-reaching plans with- 
out noise or show are too deep for worldly minds to 
fathom ; so that it is not safe for us to rely with confidence 
on the practical judgments of the world. He has shown 
us a plan, which in its weakness was imputed to a person 
beside himself, in its maturity crowned with more than 
human glory. In Him we see the true measure of what is 
right, and what is practical in conduct, of what in the end 
must commend itself to the rectified judgment of the 
world. 

Let us think of this, my friends, more than we do when 
we lay plans and pass judgments concerning life. It was 
an inconceivably mighty undertaking to set up the king- 
dom of God, and yet an obscure, unpatronizcd man under- 
took it and did it. That is practical and that is practicable 
which commends itself to a sound soul, to a calm, trustful, 
courageous soul in unison with Christ, which commends 
itself to a faith that overcomes the world, to a love that is 



54 Christ charged with being beside Himself. 

capable of self-sacrifice. Undertakings will not suffer 
shipwreck, however maligned or scorned, into which men 
who have His spirit enter. 

III. It is a little matter if we are misunderstood as long 
as God understands us. Christ too was misunderstood, but 
God understood Him. 

For a while, the bad and the foolish in their use of 
names have it all their own way. The man of earnest 
Christian effort cannot pay them back in their own coin 
if he would, and he has too much to do to revile. Quietly 
working under God's smile he trusts to Him who is in 
sympathy with what worldlings hate, and despises what 
they highly esteem, who knows the essence and the results 
of things. God's own plan, which embraces those of His 
servants, includes immeasurable ages, and works itself out 
by resistless laws. What can a generation do — what can 
names of reproach, invented by a generation, do against 
God and His counsels ? What can they do against those 
whom He favors ? 

Moreover time is God's minister, and this minister of 
God is constantly sitting in judgment on human opinions 
to approve or condemn. What enormous mistakes, often 
condensed in terms of censure, cannot Time tell of! There 
was a man to whom a crazed reason, to whom Satanic 
agency was imputed, and He now has a name above every 
name. There were men called Christians in contempt, 
and now it is the highest honor to be called a Christian. 
There was a party sneered at for uncourtly faults, dis- 
liked for rigorous precision, against whom every quill 
was dipped in gall, who were called Puritans by the im- 
pure, and now they are a landmark of history, one pri- 
mary source of civil and religious freedom among men. 
" They are the people," said the politic Pepys in his diary? 
" that at last will be found wisest." * There was a sect, 

* Pepys' Diary under Sept. 4, 1668. 



Christ charged with being beside Himself. 55 

or rather company of ministers who preached a warmer, 
truer gospel to a loose generation. They were laughed at 
by the witlings, were pelted with stones by the profane, 
were eschewed by the decorously cold ; the name Metho- 
dist was a name of opprobrium. And what have they 
done ? They have revived the religious life of England, 
kept piety from going out among the poor, and are now 
one of the strongest bodies of Christians in two great 
lands. 

Thus good men often outlive their bad names. They 
conquer by God's help a place of honor for themselves in 
the judgment of coming times. Posterity garnishes the 
sepulchres of those who were reproached by the fathers. 
Honor is done, late indeed but long, to God's standard of 
principles and measures. The enthusiasts of one age may 
be found in the next to have first hit upon some great 
secrets : and instead of idly dreaming, as they were charged 
with doing, to have uttered prophetic voices. The fanatics, 
at whom men interested in vile traffics and wrong institu- 
tions gnash their teeth, may turn out at last to be friends of 
mankind. As the heathen of the first age who called 
Christians the enemies of the human race were grievously 
in an error, so it has been since ; the world's supposed 
enemies have been its true friends, and are owned as such, 
when the tongues that maligned them have been silenced 
by death, and the reputations that were built on their dis- 
paragement are blasted. 

Thus time, God's minister, corrects mistakes. But still 
all unjust reproaches, all depreciations are not corrected. 
There are especially multitudes of private persons, who die 
forgotten with no defender in the future against the re- 
proaches of the past. Now for such as these there is still 
another court open. The last account will put each char- 
acter in its right place, and keep it there forever. For- 
gotten goodness will be called into notice again, misunder- 
stood character be commended ; men called mad, but not 



56 Christ charged with being beside Himself. 

such, will be shown to have drunk at the well of infinite 
reason ; each will be restored to the rights which he had 
iii the sight of truth aud of God. It will be then no loss 
to have played a small part well. " Whosoever shall give 
to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water 
only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he 
shall in no wise lose his reward/' 

Let us, my friends, in the great conflicts of opinion in 
which we cannot but partake, and while virulent epithets 
are freely applied to us, remember this great, this last re- 
versal of former wrong judgments. Let us live with it 
before our eye, and in a manner appeal to it from the sen- 
tence of mankind. Let it inspire us with courage, so that 
mockery and imputations of unworthy motives will not be 
able to warp us. Let it fill us with cheerful hope, for if, 
at the end of a reproached, calumniated life, the judge 
shall write upon us the name of God, and His own new 
name, will it not be an ample reward ? 



SERMON IV. 

NEUTRALITY IN REGARD TO CHRIST IMPOSSIBLE. 

Matthew xii. S l 3. He that is not with me is against me. 

The man who uttered these words wandered up and 
down in Judea and Galilee, without a place where to lay 
His head, poor in this world's goods, indebted to the charity 
of His friends for a subsistence. He had no advantages of 
family or education ; He never sought to become known, 
nor courted notoriety ; He came from an obscure place of 
a despised part of Palestine. He preached chiefly to the 
poor, died three years, or a little more, after He began His 
preachings, and made a few hundred disciples. His life, 
from an earthly point of view, would be called a failure. 
Such was the man who said, He that is not with me is 
against me, as if He were something, and taught something 
about which men could not help taking sides ; as if in spite 
of His lowness and insignificance in the eyes of men, they 
would have to form an opinion against Him or in His favor; 
as if He would force Himself upon their notice and compel 
them, all unpretending and lonely as He was, not to be in- 
different to Him and to His message. 

Suppose one of the great thinkers of antiquity had used 
these words. Let Plato or Aristotle have said, " He that 
is not with me is against me ;" the reply of derision might 
have been, "There are thousands, in all generations, who 
will never hear of you ; there are other thousands who will 
be supremely indifferent to what you write, and by and by 
you will become a name, awakening some respect perhapa 
in a few minds, but lost gradually in the forgetfulness 
which hides past ages from the view of man." 
3* 



58 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 

And yet this strange man, who never wrote a book, 
never taught a scheme of philosophy, and was only half 
understood, while He lived, by His disciples— this strange 
man, I say, used no words of assumption or arrogance, 
when He said, " He that is not with me is against me !" 
Nothing is more apparent through the world's history, 
than that He has been pushed, if I may not already sav 
has been pushing Himself, upon men's notice, in wider and 
wider circles, ever uttering through the generations the 
same language, so that what once was marvellous to be 
heard, seems to us neither strange nor unaccountable — and 
that now the question of questions for the world, turns on 
Christ, and men everywhere more and more are summoned 
to take His side, or to be against Him. 

These words of Christ were dictated by vast assumption, 
or by truthful consciousness. You might say that He was 
a deranged man, who, like many in their insanity, thought 
Himself God, or God's inspired messenger ; but His wisdom, 
His consistency, the impression He made on His disci]3les, 
the absence of all evidence of derangement show the con- 
trary with such force, that very few have been willing to 
resort to this hypothesis. You might say that He imposed 
on men consciously by His assumptions, but when you find 
it to be psychologically certain, that false claims would 
have demoralized Him, and can discover no flaw in His 
life, you have to abandon this position. You are com- 
pelled to admit that He told what was true, when He 
said : " For judgment came I into this world, that they 
which see not might see, and that they which see might re- 
main blind !" And so you have to admit, also, that He 
understood Himself, and the world, and His relation to the 
world better than all men besides did ; that He looked 
down the ages with an eye of foresight which none else had. 
And for this, you must account as you can. 

But my object is not now to show that the claim of 
Christ implied in our text, is true, but that what He said 



Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 59 

turned out, during His life-time, and has been turning out 
ever since, to be an historical fact. Men then, men now, 
are forced to consider His claims, to accept or to oppose 
them. 

The Apostle John, in a tragic sentence, says : " He came 
unto His own, and His own received Him not." The record 
in His life- time was chiefly of those who sided against Him. 
If numbers, dignity of station, loud voices of dislike and 
contempt, ought to weigh in such a matter, His memory 
ought scarcely to have survived His life-time. Still there 
were a few who received and loved Him. Let us look at 
those who were for Him, and then at the opposite and larger 
party. 

In general, you find those who were for Him, and whom 
He, by His attractive power, forced to declare themselves 
His disciples, to have belonged to the least esteemed, the 
obscurest and humblest classes of society. But among His 
adherents from these classes, He sought to excite no parti- 
zan or class-feeling in His favor. He dreaded making 
friends by appeals to any popular feeling. He preferred 
not to present His claims, rather than to win proselytes by 
political and worldly hopes. When He had reason to be- 
lieve, that those in whose behalf He multiplied the loaves 
of bread, would come by force and make Him a king, He 
hid Himself from their view. And when a part of the 
same throng met Him afterward in Capernaum, He gave 
them such instruction in regard to His person and work, 
that they deserted Him in great crowds, so as to leave only 
a few friends at His side. He forced multitudes thus into 
opposition by what a political man would have called the 
most maladroit of all methods. Instead of winning them 
and pledging them to His person by His great miracle, after 
which, as one might think, He could have schooled and 
purified them, He taught them such bard truth as to come 
into conflict with the prejudices of thousands. Thus, as 
might be expected, nearly alJ forsook Him. 



60 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 

There was a noticeable quality in His preaching, which 
ought here to be taken into account. In the midst of His 
pity and kindness, He asked for no man's good opinion or 
adhesion to His cause, \?ho did not give it out of love to 
Himself, or on some purely spiritual ground. He wanted 
no disciple, humble or lofty, who had any by-ends, any 
expectations of preferment, any hopes which were fast- 
ened on this world. Hence, very many, even of the com- 
mon people, were displeased and rejected Him. And just 
such treatment He expected ; He was prepared for it and 
was not disappointed when it came. 

Of those who were for Him, there were two classes, both 
made friends of by some peculiar attraction toward Him, 
both comparatively ignorant, yet differing widely in their 
earlier life and habits. 

One of these classes was composed of simple Galilean 
peasants, unlettered, but by no means wholly ignorant ; 
full of the national prejudices and false opinions of their 
countrymen, yet moral and religious. This class, the best 
part of the Jewish people and the most hopeful, evidently 
excited the strongest interest of Christ. Around them 
the war between Him and His enemies was the most active, 
for whoever gained them gained the nation. He lodged 
in this class, wherever He preached, such impressions of 
His power and goodness, and of His prophetic mission, 
that if He had gone further even a single step, if He had 
humored in the least their crude earthly notions of the 
Messiah, He might have gained large masses from this class 
and moved at the head of an army to Jerusalem. But He 
would not. He purposely ran entirely athwart their pre- 
judices; He forced them to be against Him. And thus 
there was left a small body of disciples drawn to Him by 
love rather than by intelligence, yet so loyal, with such 
rudiments in their souls of a life after His pattern and His 
wishes, that few as they were, they were the fit germ for 
thvj cumins kingdom of God. 



Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 61 

There was another class from which, in a very remark- 
able way, Christ drew friends and followers, although 
beyond doubt, many who belonged to it, shut — as would 
be natural for them — their hearts to His message. They 
ywere publicans and sinners, those who had lost their 
character by their unpatriotic acceptance of office as tax- 
gatherers under Roman farmers of the revenue, and those 
of either sex, especially of the female, who lived on the 
vices of society and were the most abandoned among the 
people. A philosopher passes by this sort of persons in 
contempt or in hopelessness. The laws of States only 
brand them with infamy and harden them. Society 
abhors and dreads them, regarding even to be seen in 
their company as a disgrace. Yet with this class Christ 
mingled so openly, that Pharisees reproached Him for it, 
and on this low level He called for contrite and loving 
hearts. He made publicans and harlots choose whether 
they would be for Him or against Him. I will not stop to 
inquire why He did what seemed so out of the common 
rule to the Pharisees, nor to show that this wonderful 
approach of the purest and noblest of beings to the low- 
est and vilest was an attestation to His sincerity and His 
strength of character : it is what resulted from His ming- 
ling with them that interests us now. They heard Him 
gladly. They were, or at least, some of them were filled 
with wonder and awe, as He told them of abetter life. 
They forsook their sins and loved Him. A woman that 
was a sinner, as she stood weeping and washing His feet 
with ointment, received as high an approval from Him as 
He ever gave to any mortal. He said to the uncivil, hard 
Pharisee, whose table He honored, she has had much 
forgiven, and therefore she loveth much. He brought to 
such persons the transformation of their souls by a new 
love and new hopes, and into this character personal attach- 
ment to Himself led the way. 



62 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 

One of this class of persons affords us a remarkable 
illustration of the way in which Christ sometimes forced 
Himself upon men's attention, as if He were determined to 
make them decide whether they would be for or against 
Him. He sees a man, of wealth indeed, but of bad reputa- 
tion, one of those publicans, who was supposed to have got 
his money by extortion, watching Him from a tree, as He 
passed in a crowd through the streets of Jericho. At 
once He invited Himself to be his guest. He was taken 
home, and the next day the man made his profession of 
repentance, and Christ testified that salvation had come 
to this house of the sinner. And this He did amid cen- 
sures and evil speakings, preferring to make the acquain- 
tance of the publican rather than to lodge with the most 
immaculate Pharisee. 

But most of those who sought Him, or whom He sought, 
especially if they belonged to the more intelligent classes, 
were not thus affected by their interviews with Him. 
Whether they came indifferent, out of bare curiosity, or 
came with a favorable bias, it generally happened that in 
the end they were repelled from Him. Let us now look at 
the kinds of men and the particular instances of men with 
whom He came into contact, and we shall find that they 
could not go away from Him as they came. If they came 
indifferent, they went away generally displeased or hostile; 
if they came hostile, they were apt to go away more hos- 
tile ; if they came favorably impressed, very often what He 
said altered their temper, and they passed oyer to the 
ranks of avowed enemies. 

The Pharisees, as a class, rejected Him, and finally pro- 
cured His death. Their hostile attitude is shown all along 
through the narratives, and He, on His part, took no pains 
to propitiate them, either by lowering the tone of His 
claims, or by looking with a venial eye on their faults, or by 
abating their fears of political evil from the regards of the 
people toward Him. At the same time He gave such evi- 



Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 63 

dence of extraordinary power that they had to account for 
His works of healing on principles which both proved and 
increased their malignity. It is plain that they narrowly 
watched Him ; they sent spies to entangle Him in His talk, 
and members of the great council, belonging to this party, 
seem to have gone as far as Galilee to examine and report 
on His life and conduct. While He would doubtless have 
gladly gained them as, converts on His own terms, it is 
strange to see how superior He stood to their patronage, 
and how He tried to plant truth in their minds, which 
made them reject Him with animosity. It is striking, too, 
to perceive how meanly He thought of this class of men. 
In His eyes they were hypocrites, covetous, blind, of hurt- 
ful influence on the common people, and He took pains 
to show by His own different views of the Sabbath and of 
the law how unlike His doctrine was to theirs. He thus 
offended the whole sect, saving some few better souls who 
saw greatness in His lowliness, and wisdom in His words, 
but who yet rather mourned for Him when He was cruci- 
fied than confessed Him while He lived. Nieodemus, the 
seeker with eyes half opened, Joseph of Arimathsea, the 
wealthy friend who even dared to raise a point of justice 
on His behalf in the council, will show that in this sifting 
and winnowing process of Christ's some few of those who 
were most receptive of faith in Him did yet regard Him 
with kindly eyes, although not courageous enough to be 
enrolled among His disciples. 

The Sadducees drew the notice of Christ to themselves 
less than the Pharisees, for they formed a sect which had 
less control over the people. But even they could not re- 
main indifferent to Him. Pleased as they might have 
been with the rebukes which He poured out against their 
rivals, they heard Him overthrow their own dogmas, they 
must have consented to His death, and they appear after- 
wards as the leaders of the party against the apostles. 

But let us leave these classes of persons and look at 



64 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 

single persons whom Christ forced to take sides for or 
against Him. Here the young ruler, who asked Him the 
great question how he might inherit eternal life, shall 
head our catalogue. Another mode of treatment, a few 
polite words, making the yoke easy and the burden light 
at the first, might have attached this person to the cause 
of Christ. Why was such a burden laid on him in the 
very beginning, as few from among the wealthy class 
could have borne at a maturer stage of discipleship ? Does 
it not seem harsh to repel him as Christ did ? Why he 
was put to this test we may understand better at another 
time ; at present I seek to show that our Lord did what 
He knew would drive the rich young man away, unless he 
were willing to bear all trials and go all lengths in the 
good Master's service. He put such conditions before 
him, as, if refused, could hardly fail to make him an 
enemy at last. Thus He wanted positive friends or positive 
foes. He purposely tested characters and dispositions at 
their weakest point. 

More fearful still was the trial to which Judas was 
subject. I stop, not to inquire v> r hy the Master admitted 
this unworthy man into His nearest intimacy, why He 
did not drive him away in the early part of his ministry, 
when such words as, " Have I not chosen you twelve, and 
one of you is a devil," show how He looked into Judas' 
heart. Instead of doing that He kept him by His side ; He 
put the common purse into the hands of the man whom 
covetousness might turn into a thief; He trusted him, as if 
offering him a chance to act the traitor ; in short He treated 
Judas so that he could not help becoming a thoroughly 
good man on Christ's side, or the basest of villains. Oh, 
why, we may ask, as we contemplate him while he is be- 
coming steeped in guilt under the very eye of Christ, — Oh, 
why was he brought to choose between heaven and hell ; 
why exposed to temptation by the confidence and the 
purity of Christ, when his first offers of service might have 



Neutrality in regard to Christ Lnpossible. 65 

been rejected and he have remained in comparative 
ignorance and indifference? Whatever we say to that, 
one thing is clear, that Judas could not help being a sure 
friend, or a vile and hollow enemy of the Master. 

And as we draw near the cross, we see the truth put 
into still clearer light that Christ forced people to take 
sides in respect to Him. First, Herod comes to view, the 
very man who had killed John, and whom Christ for a 
long time avoided. He had heard of Christ in his hall of 
guilty pleasures ; his remorse had suggested that John his 
victim had risen from the dead, and was working miracles 
under the name of Jesus; but he had had no personal 
interview, no occasion to reject the claims of the re- 
markable man. Now, however, at the very last, an 
opportunity was given to him of showing his friendship or 
his opposition. And how does he use it ? First to gratify 
a curiosity so strong that he is represented as exceed- 
ingly glad to see Him ; then, when he found that no miracle 
was to be expected, and no answer to inquisitive ques- 
tions to be got from Jesus, the soul of the cruel, cowardly, 
man turned into mockery; he set Him at nought and 
arrayed him in a gorgeous robe. He fell in with the 
vehement accusations of chief priests and scribes. Thus 
to him also it was given to be with Christ or against Him, 
and he chose in conformity with his character. 

Still more remarkable was the position of positive 
hostility into which Pilate was forced. This rapacious, 
unprincipled Roman moved in a sphere so unlike that of 
Christ, and was brought into contact with Jewish ideas at 
so few points, that it would have been perfectly natural 
for him to feel supreme indifference in the case. What 
could he care about the squabbles of Jews whom he 
despised and disliked? And, at least, no sympathy with 
the reigning opinion of the Jewish Council could have 
influenced him. But, he too, was forced to lake sides for 
or against Christ, and that after a personal interview, in 



66 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 

which the words and demeanor of our Lord made a 
strong impression upon him. He tried, perhaps, in the 
first moments of the examination, to be indifferent, but 
could not. There are certain persons whom you cannot 
keep your eyes off from, who attract and yet over-awe 
you. Pilate seems to have seen something strange and 
unique in the prisoner at his judgment-seat. He became, 
ere long, convinced that Christ was innocent. His 
knowledge of men assured him of the fact. Nay, there 
was something great and grand about the prisoner. Surely 
he could be no ordinary man. Pilate was without preju- 
dices — in the best condition to intervene between the pris- 
oner and the party calling for his death. He wanted to 
take His side. But the clamors of the great men of the 
Jews made him afraid, and he wavered. 

Next he tried to avoid taking sides, by throwing the re- 
sponsibility on the enemies of Christ. But they told him 
what he knew well, that the Romans had taken away the 
right of life and death from the Jewish Council, so that 
the decision rested with him alone. Then, as if a form- 
ality could clear him from guilt, he took water and 
washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am 
innocent of the blood of this just person ; see ye to it. 
All the effect of this was to make them more deliberate in 
their guilt. They took sides indeed when they said His 
blood be upon us and on our children. And he sided 
against Christ, when, out of policy, he stifled his own sense 
of justice and gave Him up. He did this when he felt 
that Christ actually pitied him as being put in a place by 
Divine Providence for which he was unequal, when the 
sin of the chief priest, a greater sinner, dragged him along 
into guilt beyond what could naturally have fallen on 
him. 

Next we have a most striking narrative of two men 
alike in crime, one of whom justified Christ, and the other 
mocked Him. The two malefactors, just before the dark- 



Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 67 

ness of death and on the very cross of their agony, as well 
as on their way to the cross, observed and watched the 
wonderful man. The one was struck with the convic- 
tion that He was innocent, and true, and worthy to be 
trusted ; the other, jeeringly and without a particle of trust, 
called on Him to save Himself and them, if He could. 
Strange, fearful contrast between an open soul and a 
closed soul at this dread hour, between the ingenuous pen- 
itent, who saw the light from Christ at the darkest mo- 
ment, and the hardened one who wanted to be saved from 
death, but wanted no Saviour. 

There was but one other occasion after this, during the 
life of the Lord, for taking sides. The soldiers, cruel, 
brutal, yet ignorant, had mocked Him, spit upon Him, took 
the side that such men, who believe in sin but not in good- 
ness, would naturally take, but there was a heathen officer 
appointed to watch at the cross, whose mind the scene af- 
fected very differently. He may have known very little 
of our Lord before, but when the earthquake strangely ac- 
companied the last breath of Christ, his awe-struck soul, 
no doubt prepared to admit the innocence of Christ before, 
took His side while He hung there as a malefactor. 
"Verily," said he, "this was a righteous man; truly this 
was the Son of God." 

The method which Christ took to bring His claims before 
men, and to test them in manifold ways, is a subject full 
of instruction and of argument for the reality of the claims 
themselves. Some of this instruction I hope to be per- 
mitted, by Divine Providence, to lay before you at another 
time. At present, I will not pursue that train of thought, 
but confine myself to a remark which naturally follows 
and completes what has been said: it is, that the Gospel 
still carries on the same method of presenting Christ to 
men, and of pressing His personal claims to their love mid 
obedience. All things else almost have changed, in the 
external aspect of religion, since Christ was? on earth ; estab- 



68 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 

lished order has taken the place of a nascent church, form 
has succeeded to the simple oral preaching of the first teach- 
ers, doctrine fixed by men has interpreted, and almost 
stifled the unsystematic Gospel of the New Testament, but 
in and above all change Christ appears, pressing Himself 
upon our notice, demanding that we adhere to Him in per- 
sonal devotion, and putting it to the proof, oftentimes, by 
tests hard to be endured, whether we will forsake all and 
follow Him, or whether we will forsake Him and follow 
the Pharisees and the Priests, the Pilate and Herod 
of the New Testament, the hardened thief and the Apostle 
that betrayed Him. He might, as I have said before, take 
another way to win us. He might use fair words with us, 
leave out of view the hardships, the oppositions we may 
encounter, and tell us of nothing but flowers and smooth 
roads and delightful prospects. But this way of treating 
us He no more adopts than He condescended to smooth the 
road into religion to the men of his day. Whatever there 
is of severity in His exclusive claim to supremacy over our 
hearts, He will not abate one jot of. We may think Him 
severe, but He repeats the old message, He cleaves to the 
old principle. He wants disciples, but He wants such cnly 
as have counted the cost, and have determined to forsake 
everything else but Him, such as are ready to love parents 
and all nearest kinsmen with a love that may be called 
hatred, so far does it fall below the height of love to Him. 
He tries us perhaps at the very point where we are most 
tender, most likely to estimate His service a hardship. To 
one He says, " Let the dead bury the dead, but go thou and 
preach the Gospel." To another, " Sell all thou hast and 
give it to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, 
and come follow me." To another, " Whoso looketh on a 
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her in 
his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and 
cast it from thee." To another, " Whosoever will save his 
life shall lose it." To another, " If ye forgive not men their 
trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive 



Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 69 

your trespasses." And to another, " Except thou be eon- 
verted and become as a little child, thou shalt not enter 
into the kingdom of heaven." Thus He approaches the de- 
laying, the worldly, the covetous, the lustful, the selfish, 
the unforgiving, and the proud at the very point, where 
sin is dearest and conscience has been most drugged : He 
says to them, I ask you to give up that sin for My sake; 
other things are to be done afterwards, but that sacrifice I 
call for now. Oh how many poor, imbecile wills, how 
many longing hearts would have been calmed for the time, 
if He could have consented to take another course, if He 
had been willing to touch with His probe, not the sorest 
wound, but the one half healed, to take the out-works, and 
not drive right at the citadel. And oh ! how many resist 
and fall away, and will have nothing to do with Christ, 
just because He requires so much at first. Could not — our 
hearts ask — could not our characters, by some other pro- 
cess, have gathered strength by yielding in little things to 
yield finally in great ? But such is not the way into the 
kingdom of God, and so we turn away from Christ and 
from His offers. 

It is remarkable, too, how now — more in fact now than 
for many ages — Christ forces Himself upon the notice of 
those who believe Him not When they speculate about 
religion, when they trace human culture back through his- 
tory, Christ stands right in their way; doctrines of in en, 
claims of churches, moral codes they might pass by ; but 
they cannot pass Christ by; He confronts them with a re- 
vered, yet not welcome presence. They cannot be in- 
different to Him ; they must examine His pretensions ; He 
perplexes them like some problem hard to be solved. They 
say to Him, "Thou who hast killed the old religions, Thou 
who hast divided history in twain, and begun a new order 
of ages, and hast struck Thy roots into nil human interests. 
who art Thou ? Give us more proof of Thy rights over us 
than Gospels, and their fruits in the world afford." Like 
Herod, they long to see some miracle dene by Him. But 



70 Neutrality in regard to Christ Impossible. 

He keeps a dead silence, only bidding them forsake their 
sins. They raise this and that objection, they pare down 
the Gospel, they lop off myths, but still there He stands to 
be accounted for, and claims of them that they follow Him. 
And so He puts them to a hard proof, calling on them for 
all those works and sentiments that make up a perfect life, 
while yet they will not draw strength from Him for the 
great conflict with evil. They must be for Him or against 
Him ; for His side, whoever He be, is the side of all virtue. 
They cannot be neutral, even when they deny that He has 
any right over them, for whatever else He has done or not 
done, He has set up a kingdom of love and well-doing in 
the world ; every one that loveth, and doeth well, must be 
for Him, every one who loveth not, and doeth evil, is 
against Him. 



SERMON V. 

THE SELF-PROPAGATING POWER OP SIN. 

Proverbs, v. 22. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, 
and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. 

It is very common in the Scriptures to bring divine pro- 
vidence and the results of sin into immediate and close 
connection with each other, as if the pain attendant on sin 
were a direct act of God. But there are other passages 
where sin is looked at, as bringing its own punishment 
with it by a law of the world analogous to the physical 
laws of nature. Each of these ways of stating the doctrine 
of retribution has its advantages : the one makes a vivid 
appeal to our feelings by setting God as a person of in- 
finite holiness directly before us ; the other represents the 
punishment of sin to be such an essential part of the sys- 
tem of things, -such an unalterable law of the moral uni- 
verse, that nothing but divine grace, making exceptions to 
law, and bringing in remedies unknown to law, can pre- 
vent its infliction. 

In the text the results of sin are represented as taking 
place in the natural order of things. The sinner thinks 
that sin is over and gone when it is once committed. But 
wisdom says no ! It has consequences from which he can- 
not escape ; it throws its cords around him, and takes hold 
of him so that he cannot get away. If you put a divine 
punisher of sin out of sight, sin does the work of the exe- 
cutioner on the sinner. " He shall die without instruction, 
and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray." 

Among these consequences of sin certain ones are often 
insisted upon, — such as bodily evils, loss of temporal ad- 

71 



72 The Self- Propagating Power of Sin. 

vantages, fear of the wrath of God, — which show the dis- 
pleasure of the Creator on the natural side, as connecting 
sin and pain together. But there is a far more awful 
view of sin, when we look at it on the moral side, as pro- 
pagating itself, becoming more intense, tending to blacken 
and corrupt the whole character, and to annihilate the 
hopes and the powers of the soul. It is to this aspect of 
sin that I invite your attention in the present discourse. 
It is one which is very affecting and impressive in itself? 
and it has to do, you will observe, not with the purpose oi 
God, but with facts, as old as mankind and as lasting as 
the soul ; with facts which any heathen sage might notice, 
and which Christianity does not create ; with facts as awful 
as any punishment of sin through the body and the sensi- 
tive powers of the human being. You may call these con- 
sequences of sin, as you like, retributive or not; you 
may say or deny that sin punishes the sinner by making 
him more and more morally corrupt. I care not for the 
terms used, — the fact, the dark fact, as a part of the sys- 
tem of things, remains unaltered. 

Let us now turn our minds to some of the general classes 
of facts or laws of character to which these consequences 
of sin can be reduced. 

I. The first of these laws of character which we notice, 
is the direct power of sin to propagate itself in the indivi- 
dual soul. If each act of sin stood alone by itself, and 
when committed brought nothing with it but its positive 
punishment, then half its sting would be taken away. It 
may be that in that case punishment would be strictly 
remedial, for the innocent soul, enticed into evil and 
speedily tasting the bitter fruits, would have ample power 
to return into the ways of life ; for sin, by the supposition, 
had made no impress on the character. The soul might 
recover, as the body now recovers after a scratch or a 
bruise. But alas it is not so. Sin is the fruitfullest 
of all parents; each new sin is a new ever flowing 



The Self -Propagating Power of Sin. 73 

source of corruption, and there is no limit to the issue of 
death. 

1. The first illustration of this power of sin which we 
notice is that exceedingly familiar one of ilie law of habit, 
or the tendency of a certain hind of sin to produce another 
of the same kind. The law of habit, which applies alike to 
all our physical, mental and moral actions, must be re- 
garded in its design as a truly benevolent one ; for what 
greater blessing could the new-made immortal have, who 
must at all events encounter temptation, than to be 
strengthened by resistance, and thus to acquire such a de- 
gree of virtue, that temptation at length would no longer 
be needed or be feared if it came nigh, But the law of 
habit, when the soul yields to sin, works death to the sin- 
ner: — like the pillar of the cloud which made day to 
Israel, and was darkness to the Egyptians, so this law, 
which is bright to the well-doer, sheds night upon the path 
of the sinner until he is plunged into the sea of death. It 
reigns over every act, quality, and state of the soul, to 
render the sinful act easier, to intensify the desire, to de- 
stroy the impression of danger, to increase the spirit of 
neglect and delay. Take the internal affection of envy for 
an example of the ease of sin. The soul separated from 
God becomes unhappy and discontented. In its discon- 
tent the sight of the enjoyments of others gives it pa : n by 
making it aware continually of the void within, and this 
is what we call envy. Now the tendency has become such 
that every good whatever, pertaining to another, by this 
revival of the feeling of unrest will give the soul pain ; 
and thus it places itself at war with all the joy in the uni- 
verse, and this, although it bleeds under the stings of envy 
at every pore. Why docs it not cast off this tormentor in 
some desperate struggle as if for eternal life? Alas! tho 
law of character is stronger than the soul ; the soul must, 
envy if away from God, and must envy more and more, 
and on less and less provocation, the farther it flees from 
4 



74 The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 

its true rest. It must in the end acquire the impression 
that all the happiness or prosperity of others is inconsist- 
ent with its own. 

Or, take an external habit — such as some sensual appe- 
tite, for an example. An appetite, we are told, answers to 
some end for which man was made, and the pleasure at- 
tending it is a wise provision for fulfilling the end. Under 
the law of reason and of God, therefore, any appetite 
would be innocent and harmless ; none of them would in- 
terfere with the claims of God or of man, of the soul or of 
the body ; none would be clamorous for instantaneous grati- 
fication, nor stir up an agitation in the soul, nor demand 
to be gratified at the wrong time or in the wrong degree. 
And as if to prevent the formation of evil habits, God has 
made the pain and the shame and the loss from excess so 
obvious in the world, that every new transgressor is fore- 
warned by the shipwrecks of others if not by the voice of 
conscience. When now these barriers are past, which are 
placed in the way of sin by the law of God imprinted on 
human nature, law parts company with the sinner, and 
turns into his enemy — not indeed into his enemy in this 
sense that it hands him over to hopeless punishment, but 
in this, that it shows him, by what he is now bringing on 
himself, what he will one day bring on himself, when all 
his powers of resistance to temptation are weakened, and 
his leaning to unlawful pleasure has grown strong. For 
by yielding to sinful desire he changes the current of his 
thought, so that a new object seizes on the trains of 
thought and bends them from their old direction ; he dis- 
covers new facilities for indulgence, and new ways of keep- 
ing it secret ; he invents excuses for it, which rise in their 
sophistry and their wide-reaching extent, until every plea- 
sure, however base, could be justified on the same ground ; 
he increases the strength of desire until it becomes his main 
purpose to live for its gratification ; — yes, when it has be- 
come so -strong that its intensity has grown into an awful 
hunger, and when nature has become so blunt that all 



The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 75 

pleasure from it is killed out, desire rages still the more 
fiercely, and the aim now is to put an end to an ever re- 
turning torment, rather than to supply new pleasure to a 
sated soul. Oh ! ye drunkards, who drink now to still a 
gnawing on the vitals which you liken to the fires of hell, 
and who yet are so holden by the cords of your sins that 
you are incurable ; oh ! ye degraded libertines, who have 
abused your natures in the indulgence of brutish lusts, 
until intellect is wasted and the body is diseased all over ; 
oh ! ye tenants of hospitals, who in catering to some vice 
have not been able to stop, until the divine ray of a soul 
is buried in hopeless idiocy, rise up in your dreadful 
legions, and testify to these young souls who are forming 
their habits, what the tendency is of indulged sins ; bear 
witness if your own iniquities have not taken you and you 
are not holden by the cords of your sins — bear witness if 
sin must not be a vast evil, when it leads to such an end. 

2. But another illustration of the self-propagating 
power of sin is found in the tendency of a sin of one land 
to produce sins of another kin d. We supposed a little 
while since that each act of sin stood by itself, without 
having any fruits or results within the soul. Suppose now 
that each kind of sin stood alone, with no tendency to 
bring on any other. If this were so, how much would 
the poison of sin be qualified, how much of self-restorative 
power would be still left to the sinner. For by the sup- 
position he has not undermined character ; all his moral 
perceptions, his dispositions, his native tendencies to virtue 
remain unimpaired ; and it may be these will prove 
stronger than the rebellious desire which has risen up to 
destroy the peace and break the confederacy of harmonious 
powers within the soul. And thus perhaps the disorders 
caused by this one inordinate impulse, when every thing- 
is tamed down and brought back into place again, may bo 
a landmark in the soul's history in favor of lasting union 
and peace. But alas ! the supposition is a dream relating 



76 The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 

to a possible kind of nature, and does not appl/ to the 
character of man. The confederacy of powers in nim 
admits of no separate action of any one wayward impulse, 
but as soon as evil in one shape appears, it tends to cor- 
rupt all the parts of the soul, to disorganize, to reduce 
other powers under its own control, to weaken those which 
resist, until the most harmonious of structures becomes a 
wreck, the fairest of temples lies on the ground, with its 
walls parted and its pillars broken, a hopeless ruin. And 
could it well be otherwise, if sin be a divorce of the soul 
from God ? Ought not some awful confusion naturally to 
ensue, when the soul, at war within, at war with the laws 
of its nature, must be conceived of as being at war with 
its God also ? 

The first point we notice here is, that one sort of sin puts 
the body or soul, or both, into such a state, that another 
sort becomes more easy and natural. Thus there is an 
affinity between bodily lusts, they are relations who intro- 
duce one another into the quarter they have occupied — ■ 
and, again, any one of them tends to derange the soul by a 
loss of inivard peace. In this way, drunkenness, for in- 
stance, may be the forerunner, not only of other base 
indulgences, but even of envy, distant as their province 
seems ; for the loss of comfort, or of a good name, which 
drunkenness brings with it, may make the prosperity of 
another a source of anguish. By an opposite process, the 
loss of inward quiet, which an internal sin, like envy or 
inordinate worldly care occasions, may drive the man into 
degrading pleasures in quest of something to satisfy or 
stupefy the soul. Still further it will seem natural, if not 
necessary, that one wrong affection should render another 
easier, if not give birth to it, as anger may give rise to 
detraction, revenge, and all the hateful brood that herd 
with them, or pride, after blunting the edge of the sym- 
pathies, may open the door to the same malevolent traits 
of character. And even an absorbing master 2iassion, like 



The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 17 

covetousness or ambition, when it has grown so great as to 
domineer over the enslaved soul, although it may exclude 
some other inconsistent passion, does not reign alone, but 
has around and behind it a gloomy train of satellites, 
which are little tyrants in turn. Covetousness — let it sway 
the soul, and suspicion, fraud, falsehood, discontent, envy, 
malice, will get as firm a foothold as the master demon 
himself, and no power of his can afterwards drive them 
from his company. The miser cannot be also a prodigal, 
but he must have spirits of hate and death in his soul. 
So ambition may exclude covetousness from the throne, 
but it Las another train of its own familiars, as greedy, if 
not &s base, as those of covetousness. When the spirit of 
evil conquers a man, "it taketh to itself seven other 
spirits, and they enter in and dwell there, and the last 
state of that man is worse than the first." 

But, again, a more striking example of the connection 
behveen different kinds of sins is seen, when a man resorts 
to a new kind of sin to save himself from the effects of the 
first. The general explanation of this fact in character is 
simple enough. According to God's merciful system in 
this world — under which many are kept back from sins, 
or at least from gross ones, after a warning of experience — 
sin is generally attended with evil consequences, which are 
sufficiently annoying. Now, when a soul has gone far 
enough on in its evil career to perceive what is coming, 
two paths are open to it. One is to confess its fault to 
God, and seek peace and union with Him ; the other is to 
devise some mode of concealing sin, or of supplying the 
wants which its commission in the past has occasioned. 
This last is the ordinary way, in which human nature en- 
deavors to avoid the cords of its sins, when they begin to 
hold it tight. And in this way the reign of sin is extended 
over the character, and reaches on through all the lengths 
of time. 

Thus lot a man by vicious practice have brought liim- 



78 The Self-Propagating Poiver of Sin. 

self into fear of want, he lies under a fearful temptation to 
steal or rob or peculate or commit forgery, according to 
his condition of life, his facility of gaining his end, and 
his qualities of character. I need not say that the num- 
ber of those comparatively innocent thieves, who " steal 
to satisfy the soul when they are hungry," bears a small 
ratio to those whom guilt drives onward into deeper guilt ; 
or that the plunderers and defrauders of more genteel 
society are almost all of them led into their new crimes 
in order to repair the ruin with which old ones had 
threatened them. 

But the painfullest view of our life suggested by these 
considerations, is that by the process of sin just described 
falsehood is introduced into the world and spread to an 
infinite extent. Every sin needs a falsehood, some con- 
cealment or pretense or profession, to support it, and thus 
the sinner knows that in the case of each new sin he can 
resort to a new lie to save himself from immediate evil. 
Think what a deadly fountain is opened here, which, but 
for previous sinning, would never have sent forth its poi- 
sonous waters over the world, and what an awful tempta- 
tion comes upon the sinner's soul from the success and 
ease of its past concealments and lies. Virtue needs no 
cloak nor borrowed garb. There never would be an act of 
insincerity, or even of dissimulation in a virtuous world — ■ 
not a tone or gesture or hint tending to deceive or mis- 
guide. All the boundless numbers of all the forms of 
untruthfulness, whose very names show their frequency, 
insincerities, prevarications, equivocations, falsehoods, lies, 
concealments of truths, pretenses, hypocrisies, treacheries, 
perjuries, and the rest, — all these are the supports, and 
the resorts of sin, generated by sin, generating sin. And 
thus, if the sin that gave birth to the falsehood tempts the 
soul no longer, the falsehood still sets up its tent in the 
soul. In the impressive language of the prophet, " that 
which the palmer worm hath left, hath the locust eaten, 



The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 79 

and that which the locust hath left hath the canker worm 
eaten, and that which the canker worm hath left hath the 
caterpillar eaten." It is as with a burning house : whom 
the flame consumes not the smoke suffocates. 

Nor can I forbear to mention in this place that another 
dark shade is thrown over the malignity of sin, from the 
fact, that it so often makes use of innocent motives to pro- 
pagate its power over the soul. The fear of danger or 
evil is a good thing, for it quickens the mind in its efforts 
to avoid danger, and lead us into the path of virtue which 
is the path of safety. The love of esteem is a social princi- 
ple most happily put into us that it may aid the virtue of 
the one by the approbation of the many. But see how, the 
moment that sin reigns within us, these innocent princi- 
ples become sources of temptation and ministers of death 
to the soul. The fear of danger or of want, impels into 
new crimes as an escape from the results of old ones. The 
love of esteem is the handmaid of all falsehood and 
hypocrisy. What a picture this gives of the baneful 
power of sin — that it can undermine and corrupt the soul 
by the help of the very affections which were made to be 
the servants of virtue — that what can be used to build uj> 
everything good, it uses only to destroy. 

II. Another law of character by which the propagation 
and strength of sin is secured, is the tendency of sin to 
produce moral blindness. Our Saviour has stated the 
leading thought here in these words : " Every one that 
doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, 
lest his deeds should be reproved." Sin freely chosen 
must needs seek for some justification or palliation ; other- 
wise the moral sense is aroused, and the soul is filled with 
pain and alarm. Such justification cannot be found in 
moral or religious truth, and of this the soul is more or 
less distinctly aware. Hence an instinctive dread of 
truth, and a willingness to receive and embrace plausible) 
unsound excuses for sin, which neutralize or destroy ltd 



80 The Stlj-Propagatiag Power of Sin. 

power. And in the process, inasmuch, as there is a moral 
if not a logical affinity between all truths, and the same 
between all falsehoods, when one untruth is embraced it 
brings another in its train, and yet another, until a whole 
system is constructed, on which the mind relies the more, 
because it has the compactness and strength of a system. 
Of course, the system of truth is driven out, and a hostil- 
ity grows up in the soul towards it, because it is perceived 
to be a destroyer of present comfort and peace, "Lest 
his deeds should be reproved." They who know how 
annoying is the fault-finder, and how irritating sometimes 
is even the reproof of a friend given in kindness, will esti- 
mate what the feeling would be towards truth when it 
came into the soul while falsehood was building up ite 
castle, and sought to pull it down ; what a bitter war 
would ensue, a war which might reach beyond truth itself 
to all that love it, to all that preach it, to the book which 
professes to contain it, to the author of it Himself. In 
short the opposition is fitly expressed by that great phy- 
sical contrast of light with darkness, which our Saviour 
uses in His illustration. 

Xow the ways in which this overthrow of unperverted 
moral judgments, this rejection of light tends to strengthen 
the power of sin, are manifold. It decreases the restrain- 
ing and remedial power of conscience ; it kills the sense 
of danger and even adds hopefulness to sin ; it destroys 
any influence which the beauty and glory of truth could 
put forth ; in short, it removes those checks from pru- 
dence, from the moral powers, and from the character of 
God, which retard the career of sin. If sin reigned 
before, how much more tyrannical its reign when false- 
hood is become its prime minister. 

III. Closely connected with this blinding power of sin 
is another law of character — that sin tends to benumb 
and root out the sensibilities, — by which process again, 
its power over the soul is anew increased. " Who, being 



The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 81 

past feeling, have given themselves over to lasciviousness, 
to work all uncleanness with greediness." We may 
perhaps reduce such a law, if it shall be found to exist, 
under the general law of habit, for where there is a long- 
continued check on the exercise of a feeling, it loses its 
power by habitual neglect, or suppression, just as it gains 
power by exercise. Now that such a law does exist, we 
may almost assume : it is acknowledged, and its workings 
are seen on every hand. It is seen in the acquired cruelty 
of men of blood. " What difference do one hundred 
thousand men dead or alive make to me?" said Napoleon, 
when an Austrian statesman urged the loss of life which 
his measures would involve. It is seen in the horrible 
want of pity of the miser ; it is seen in that deadness to 
conscience, produced by long sinning, to which we have 
alluded above ; in that sinking down below the sense of 
character which the drunkard carries, as it were, on his 
face ; in the disregard of rights which the prodigal mani- 
fests ; in the extinction of the family affections ; in the 
astonishing selfishness of the seducer ; in the destruction 
almost complete of the religious sense of the blasphemer. 

And this view of sin shows it in its true light as a 
perverter of nature ; an overturner of all those particular 
traits, the union of which under love to God makes the 
harmony and beauty of the soul. Sin tends to destroy 
even those qualities which in a brute awaken our deep 
interest, and to put into their place a lead-colored mono- 
tonous selfishness, which is not properly human nature, 
but its wreck and overthrow. Oh ! when selfishness, from 
being an instinct, becomes a law, a reign, a tyranny over 
the soul, when this corruption has absorbed and assimi- 
lated to itself all the feelings and affections, must not the 
power of sin be greatly augmented ? 

IV. Auothcr of the self-perpetuating processes oi' sin 
consists in its crippling the power of the will to under- 
take a reform. The will itself, indeed, as a faculty, can- 
3* 



82 The Self Propagating Power of Sin. 

not suffer extinction, any more than the soul. It must 
continue through thousands of years of sinning, and may 
show a fearful energy against the enemies of sin : it may 
even consent to what looks like disinterested sacrifices, 
out of mere hostility to goodness. But I refer to those 
cases, very frequent in life, which show a will so long 
overcome by the strength of sin and by ill-success in op- 
posing it, that the purpose of reform is abandoned in de- 
spair. Here the infirmity of the will depends not on de- 
ficiency of intellect, nor on natural weakness of the 
faculty, nor on constitutional want of hope, but on a 
practical estimate of the chances of success derived from 
experience. The man has fallen into a bad habit and 
struggles like a captive to set himself free. He under- 
takes the task with a firm purpose, and a strong hope, but 
there are two things he has not taken into account — the 
temporary excitement and even recklessness which desire 
can introduce into the soul, and the fallacious pleas by 
which it attempts to pacify conscience. At the moment 
of temptation, therefore, he loses his strength and will to 
resist, and is again caught and claimed by the kidnappers 
of the soul. The power of habit, now known to him by 
experience, increases the probabilities of being overcome 
again, and he goes back to this work of resistance with 
less hope than before. And so, repeated failures prostrate 
him, he owns himself vanquished, foresees no better times 
ahead, and yields as a slave to sin. Must not sin now 
have a heavier dominion over him than at first — yea, if 
he fall into some new kind of sin, will not this sense of 
weakness go with him, and help on the conquests of the 
new master? Oh wretched man that he is, who shall 
deliver him from the body of this death ? Who but that 
very Kansomer from whom sin keeps him far away ? 

The outcries of human nature under this bondage to 
sin are tragic indeed ; no scene of murdered helplessness 
is more lamentable. Hear how Coleridge writes during 



The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 83 

that part of his life when he was a slave of opium, from 
which at length divine grace rescued him. The words 
are from a letter to Mr. Cottle : " Had I but a few hun- 
dred pounds, but two hundred, half to send to Mrs. Cole- 
ridge, and half to place myself in a private mad-house, 
where I could procure nothing but what a physician 
thought proper, and where a medical attendant could be 
constantly with me for two or three months (in less than 
that time life or death would be determined), then there 
might be hope. Now there is none ! O God ! how will- 
ingly would I place myself under Dr. l?ox, in his estab- 
lishment ; for my case is a species of madness, only that 
it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the volition, 
and not of the intellectual faculties. You bid me rouse 
myself! go bid a paralytic in both arms to rub them 
briskly together, and that will cure him. ' Alas ! ' he 
would reply, i that I cannot move my arms is my com- 
plaint, and my misery.' " 

I knew a man once, now dead, a learned lawyer and a 
fine Greek scholar, but a drunkard. At his death his 
journal was found, and there, from day to day, he re- 
corded his lapses, his lamentations, his hopes, or his want of 
hopes ; and the dreary record went on until he died with- 
out reform. It suggested to me the analogy of an officer 
in a weak fortress writing down the successes of the enemy. 
Now they are on the esplanade, now upon the glacis, now 
they have taken a bastion, now the resisting soldiers are 
slain, and now a half-completed sentence shows that he, 
too, is dead. Oh, when sin takes our will away and our 
hope, what is left to resist its power ? 

V. Sin propagates itself by means of the tendency of 
men to associate with persons of like character and to 
avoid the company of persons of an opposite character. 
The good and the bad, the farther their characters diverge, 
have the less fellowship with one another, until their tastes 
judgments, pleasures, and purposes, become diametrically 



84 The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 

opposite. It is indeed a merciful provision that ten 
thousand ties of kindred, neighborhood, business, mutual 
dependence, bind men of all characters and lives to one 
another. And by the constitution of this earthly being 
of ours, good and evil being in the germ and not having 
attained their full growth, cannot take the attitude of full 
opposition, because they cannot appear to each other as 
they really are. There is, moreover, a constant possibility 
of reform in a world of grace. But even here, in this 
world of confused and imperfect characters, what a sepa- 
ration takes place between the opposite principles, between 
the men of honor who shrink from the contact of the base, 
and the men of dishonor who dread seeing themselves in 
the light of noble deeds, and dread coming to a dis- 
covery of their own shame ; between the women of purity, 
and the forlorn ones who have cast character and hope 
away ; between the servant of God, and him who believes 
in no God or keeps at a distance from His face. But this 
separation, effected by sin, is far from keeping the sinner 
alone. He needs company the more, the less he is able to 
find resources, comfort, support within himself. Thus 
there are, in fact, two societies in spite of the binding 
forces among mankind, and if each of us, my friends, 
could live long enough to carry out the tendencies in us to 
their perfection, if this world consisted of old inhabitants 
who had time to develop their qualities in full, then there 
would be as wide a separation between men of opposite 
lives as if they dwelt in different planets. 

In the operation of this law of companionship, if I may 
so call it, the evil have a power and an increasing power 
over each other. The worst maxims and the worst 
opinions prevail, for they are a logical result of evil cha- 
racters. Separated from the good, the evil have no check - 
on their mutual influence. The older corrupt the younger. 
Can you doubt that every perversion of truth, every de- 
praved habit, must have full sweep in such a society ? 



The Self-ProjJagating Power of Sin. 85 

Can you question the power of sin to propagate, to inten- 
sify itself, where the social principle itself is in the service 
of evil ? O, what a blessing it is that in this system of 
grace such societies are of limited dimensions, are broken 
up by various causes, and that remedial influences from 
rejected grace shine sometimes with life-giving power into 
these chambers of death. Blessed be God that the full 
fruits of sin are not gathered in this world, for the tenden- 
cies, even when partially counteracted, and manifested but 
in their beginnings, are beyond measure appalling. 

In conclusion, now, I have to say that with the justice 
or goodness of this system, I have at present nothing to 
do. The Bible did not set it on foot, the Bible does not 
fully explain it, but only looks at it as a dark fact. Nor 
can I stop to discuss the question whether men who are 
thus under the sway of moral death, are so wholly by 
their own fault, or partly by their misfortune. Somehow 
or other mankind, ready as they are to palliate sin, are 
unanimous through all their races and generations and 
forms of life, in feeling and owning a load of sinfulness. 
But suppose mankind in this wholly wrong, I ask whether 
it does any good, when you have the pestilence, to inquire 
whom you took it from, or whether you were to blame in 
catching it, rather than whether it can be cured? Nor 
finally, will I refute the unfounded suggestion, that sin 
may be a stage of being through which we all must pass 
toward a higher. At least, sin does not cure itself or pave 
the way toward truth and right. The question then still is, 
is there any cure ? There is no cure certainly in continu- 
ing to sin. Sin no more destroys its own sway over the 
soul than Satan casts out Satan. If there be any euro it 
must be found outside of the region which sin governs, 
. either from some law of character, if there be any, over 
which sin has not gotten the mastery, or from some divine 
strength which is to be sought with all possible earnest 
ness. 



86 The Self-Propagating Power of Sin. 

Tell ine, then, my hearer, is sin or is it not a great evil, 
one which no pains to oppose or to cure, are too great ? 
Do you say that you are not sensible of the greatness of 
the evil, that the tendencies which have been told of are 
seen in extreme cases only ? But if the tendencies are 
inseparable from sin ; if it sometimes fails to work out its 
full task, because some influence outside of the man con- 
trols it in part; if you can see its devastations in all ages 
and climes ; if even the one vice of drunkenness has slain 
more victims than pestilence and war, what then ? Is it 
not fair to point out such inevitable tendencies, is it not 
wise to dread them, is it not consistent with truth to use 
them as the measure of the power of sin ? 

I call on you then to find out for yourself a cure. I 
offer you one, Christ and His gracious Spirit. But if you 
do not believe in it, or dislike it, choose for yourself some 
other. Be a Pharisee, or an ascetic, fight against sin, 
crucify it in your own fashion. Get rid of it in some new 
way of your own if you can, no matter how, provided 
only you are freed effectually from this self-spreading and 
self-continuing curse. Oh, my friends, the poor self-tor- 
menting Hindoo Faquir may be wrong in his means, but 
his end is a nobler one than you can ever reach, while you 
neglect your character. Yes ! all, in every land, Pagans 
or Christians, clowns or philosophers, who, in whatever 
way have fought against or wept over the grand evil, will 
rise up in the judgment and condemn you because you 
have thought so lightly of this dread malady of your soul. 



SERMON VI. 

SIN UNNATURAL. 

Jer. ii. 12, 13. Be astonished, ye heavens at this and be horribly 
afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people have com- 
mitted two evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, 
and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no 
water. 

The heavens and all their host obey the law of their 
nature with unchanging regularity. But man, another 
of the works of God, commits two evils ; he forsakes the 
fountain of living waters, and hews out for himself broken 
cisterns that can hold no water. In thus deserting the 
waters of life he is untrue to his own nature. If the 
heavens had a soul and could notice this unnatural con- 
duct, so unlike to their conformity to the law of their 
being, they would be astonished and horribly afraid. 
The whole universe under physical law would cry out 
against man's strange disobedience to moral law, his 
swerving from his nature, his disloyalty to the author of 
his nature. 

It is this aspect of man as a sinner and this quality of 
his sin, for which I bespeak your attention at the present 
time. There is something unaccountable and unnatural 
about sin, which, if we were not the victims of its power 
every day, would startle us also and make us horribly 
afraid. If we merely heard of it as existing in some 
other of God's worlds, we should doubt whether the 
report of it that reached our cars could be true. We 
should demand more than the usual amount of testimony, 
as in the case of a miracle, before believing so unnatural 
a story, and when it was proved, should not cease to 

87 



88 Sin Unnatural. 

wonder, and to ask what cause beyond our experience had 
brought to pass a thing so marvellous. 

This view of sin as being unnatural is quite unlike that 
which men are apt to take. It is not strange, they think, 
to cheat or lie or get drunk, but to lead a perfectly sober, 
truthful, honest life is wonderful. To remain in a state 
of sin is quite natural, but to become a true Christian by 
a hearty reception of the Gospel is regarded as so un- 
natural, that many who profess to believe in Christianity 
refuse their faith to the reality of conversion, and many 
others describe it as the infusion of a new nature, as if 
the very seeds and capabilities of goodness had been lost 
out of the human soul. 

This is explained in part by the fact that man, as 
fallen, is in an abnormal or unnatural state, so that he 
wonders, when he sees the normal condition of his nature. 
The very description of this state as a fall implies that it 
is unnatural, that it is a departure from a type or cha- 
racter properly belonging to mankind, a sinking down 
from a level where we had been placed, or a separation 
from God with whom we were for a time in harmony. 
And yet we are so removed in character and in experience 
from the higher, holier life which is our birth-right, that 
such a life startles us as something not human. Men stare 
at goodness, as if it had no right to be here on earth, or 
suspect it as unreal. Even Christ, a practical life and not 
an idea of the mind, Christ all instinct with living good- 
ness, is a marvel in His perfection, so that some seek for 
flaws in His character, and others cannot believe that 
such goodness existed in the shape of man, and others 
still refer his perfection to the God within Him ; and yet 
He was, as a perfect man, a sample of a regular unfolding 
of our nature. The regular irregularity of man is the 
wonder. There is none like it in the material world. 
The asteroids, the deformities, and unwonted misgrowths 
of animals, and even double flowers, are strange, but they 



Sin Unnatural. 89 

are exceptions. So it is also with deranged reason. But 
here the abnormal is the order of things, the conformity 
to nature is the exception almost unheard of. 

Among the marvels or mysteries of sin, we name as the 
first — 

That it prevents men from pursuing what they own 
to be the highest good. 

There is an often quoted passage of the poet Ovid * 
where a person in a conflict between reason and desire is 
made to say, " Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor ;" 
and in a like strain we hear the apostle Paul, or rather 
the man made aware of the bondage of sin saying through 
him, " That which I do, I allow not : for what I would, that 
do I not, but what I hate, that do I." And so true to 
human nature such words are, that no one ever thought 
of them as being misrepresentations of the real state of 
man. No ! man everywhere, by every kind of confession, 
uttered or unuttered, makes known that he has an idea of 
duty, right, good, within him to which he fails to conform, 
that he does this by no constraint, but prefers the known 
worse to the known better, that in so acting he sacrifices 
what he verily believes to be his highest happiness even 
in this world, casting another world out of account. And 
everywhere we see examples of this sacrifice of a higher 
good to a lower, of acknowledged greater happiness to 
less, of the improvement of the mind to the enjoyments of 
the body, of future hopes to present pleasure, of an object 
of desire felt to be praiseworthy and exalted to one which 
is base and low and sure to be followed by remorse. We 
find this cleaving to the best of men and to the wisest: the 
influences of the gospel may weaken but never remove this 
tendency. It belongs to mankind. 

But if any tiling can be inferred from our nature and 
capacities, it is certain, that an estimate of the eompara- 

* Mot am. vii., 20, 21. 



90 Sin Unnatural 

tive values of things desirable is implanted in our minds, 
in order that we may choose the superior good and refuse 
the inferior. When we fail to do this, we reproach our- 
selves with folly or with sin. When we look back upon 
past choices and pathways in life, we feel remorse or self- 
approbation, or at least, respect or despise ourselves, in 
proportion as we have been true or false to our estimates 
and convictions in our choices between objects of desire. 
This is inevitable, whether we make the true good to con- 
sist in happiness, or in obedience to the law of duty, or in 
being like God, or under whatever aspect we view that 
which we believe to be the highest object of desire. Thus 
there is a universal preference of a lower good to a higher 
in the life of men, a universal power of comparing goods 
with tolerable accuracy, and a universal condemnation 
lying on the race for not being true to its estimates and 
standards. 

Is there not, now, something very strange in this fatal 
proclivity toward the low, in this constant, wide-spread, 
unalterable folly of choosing wrong within the moral 
sphere of action ? Suppose that we found the same obli- 
quity of judgment and choice elsewhere — that, for in- 
stance, a scholar, aware what was the right meaning of a 
passage according to the laws of thought and language, 
deliberately chose a wrong meaning ; or a merchant, ac- 
quainted with the laws of trade, undertook an adventure 
with his eyes open, from which only ruin was to be ex- 
pected ; or a general, patriotic and discerning, adopted a 
plan of battle which all his experience had condemned as 
sure to end in his defeat ; should we not regard such a 
person, if we could conceive he had thus acted, as a kind 
of moral prodigy, as fit to be put away in a museum of 
morbid psychology among the deranged men who have 
believed themselves to be two persons, or that their souls 
had gone from their bodies ? Do you say that this is a per- 
verted use of freedom ? But is there nothing strange in a 



Sin Unnatural. 91 

perversion, which sacrifices a known good ? Or do you 
say that it is a fatal, hopeless want of freedom ? But is 
there nothing strange in such fatality, if a creature of God 
is made to choose what he condemns ; and if there were no 
God, would it not be equally strange that man, the off- 
spring of chance, should regularly condemn what he 
chooses? Or will you say that by some internal excitement 
of desire the present inferior good or even the present evil 
puts on fair colors, takes a false dress, and with a half 
conscious connivance of the soul deceives it into sin ? 
Very well, but why cannot the superior good which is in 
itself all beauty and in its fruits all enjoyment, — why 
cannot this take its proper place before the mind, and act 
with its proper strength ? Is there nothing strange in this 
— that falsehood should have such power of fascination, 
such constant power, and truth show itself so feeble, at 
the very time when we discern them both, and own the 
force of obligation ? Must we not, when we reflect what 
man was made for, what the law of his nature is, what 
his harmonies and his true life are, wonder that he should 
make such choices in the sunlight of truth, with great 
risks and threatened evils attending a wrong choice, with 
conscience not yet seared, with his soul craving the 
better portion, and often, very often, witnessing against him 
that he is preferring death to life ? Here then is a marvel 
of our nature : sin is something unnatural and monstrous ; 
its sway is not according to the true law of the soul's con- 
stitution but against it. 

II. Another marvel, connected with the sway of sin is, 
that it is not dependent on a weak capacity, but that the 
very highest intellects are often employed in its service. 

It is indeed true, that sagacity and folly will differ in 
their ways of sinning and of escaping detection. An ab- 
surd, or ill-contrived crime, will be committed by a boy or 
a half-Avitted person, and not by a man of shrewdness. 
Whence it may happen, that the criminals in a peniten- 



92 Sin Unnatural 

tiary may be, in the average, below the ordinary range of 
intellect. In other words, the vigor of mind will show 
itself, either by abstaining from certain crimes, or by com- 
mitting them in such a way that they will not be brought 
to light. But we do not find that the highest abilities 
keep men from sinning, from a life of pleasure, from 
deadly selfishness, from feelings which carry with them 
their own sting. Great minds lie like wrecks all along the 
course of life ; either they disbelieve against evidence, or 
give themselves up to monstrous pleasures, or destroy the 
welfare of society by their self-will, or gnaw upon them- 
selves with a deadly hatred of others. If they are some- 
times philosophers, or great inventors, or philanthropists, 
they are at other times in the front ranks of wickedness. 
There have been great infidels, as well as great Christians. 
There have been great conquerors, scourges of men, as well 
as great philanthropists. And, on the other hand, persons 
of feeble capacity are oftentimes good ; better than many — 
if not than any — of the great men of their times. Nay, so 
often have intellect and morals been out of harmony, that 
many persons think knavery a prima fade evidence of 
talent, — confessing thus, that in their opinion, men are 
likely to employ their powers of mind in a wrong and 
foolish way. 

Now is there not something very strange in this ? We 
do not wonder when we hear that an idiot, or half-idiot, 
has committed a crime ; and a court will not punish him, 
because he has not mind enough to balance- his native 
strength of passion. He will be shut up as a dangerous 
person, but not punished as a criminal. Ought it not to 
be strange, on the other hand, that intellect is used by so 
many, not to check desires, which end in crime, but to en- 
large the plans of sinning, and to purchase impunity ? 
And if a moderate intellect will fit a man for the business 
of this world, ought we not to expect, if there is not some- 
thing abnormal in our condition, that the Caesars and Na- 



Sin Unnatural. 93 

poleons, that the great statesmen, and poets, and artists, 
should be pre-eminently the men of God ; men for whose 
minds this world was too small, who shook off its fetters 
and soared away towards the Great Mind that filleth the 
universe ? But who among them turns his thoughts thus 
upward, and forms his plans on a scale as grand as his 
own mind ? It does not surprise us to see the very ablest 
men slaves of drunkenness or impurity, or to see them filled 
with intense hate; their intellects, so far from looking 
ahead and warning them against dangers, are ministering 
to their lusts, and putting fuel on the flame, like the en- 
gineers in a steamer, when it is running on the rocks. 
And, therefore, moralists have made tirades against the 
weakness of the human intellect, because great men have 
rushed into all follies to their own ruin. Whereas the in- 
tellect is not at fault — it can scale the heavens, and travel 
through eternity, it can search all depths of science, and is 
equal to all things with which our nature has to do ; — 
why should it then not mitigate, why should it carry for- 
ward the great malady of sin ? 

III. Another marvel of sin is that its existence involves 
the contradiction of the freedom and the slavery of the 
will. This is but another aspect of the truth which we 
have already considered — that the soul steadily chooses in 
some strange way an inferior good before a superior ; but 
it is too important a view of our nature not to be noticed 
by itself. Mankind in choosing the evil, have been an 
enigma to themselves, and to the philosophers who have 
studied human nature. On the one hand, duty implies 
power to do what is required, freedom to yield to a given 
motive or reject it; on the other hand, the experience of 
the soul points to a bondage under sin, in which the free- 
dom natural and essential to it is obstructed, and the man 
is as much a slave, as if he never gave his assent. So 
helpless man appears, so fruitless are his unaided efforts 
to escape from evil habit, and above all to yield himself 



94 Sin Unnatural. 

to God his rightful ruler, that the unexercised freedom 
seems unreal to many, and they deny its existence. Some 
hold that the will is swayed by laws as sure and almost as 
mechanical as those of the outer world. Others quiet 
their consciences by the plea that they are not responsible. 
But after all, the faith in human freedom comes back 
and falls into conflict with the certain awful fact of the 
bondage of our nature under sin. We see our nature ex- 
ercise its freedom in various ways — choosing now a higher 
good in preference to a lower, and now a lower before a 
higher, — doing this over and over within the sphere of 
earthly things, yet when it looks the supreme good full in 
the face unable to choose Him, unable to love Him, until, 
in some great crisis which we call conversion, and which 
is as marvellous as sin is, we find the soul acting with 
recovered power, acting out itself, and soaring in love to 
the fountain and life of its being. Oh, who can deny this 
to be marvellous, that all good things, save the truest 
good, are accepted or rejected ad libitum, while that which 
alone deserves to be called good, is avoided and disliked 
constantly. Ye philosophers, tell us if there be any 
marvel in nature like this. It is as if a balance should 
tell every small weight with minutest accuracy, and when 
a large weight was put on, should refuse to move at all. 
It is as if the planets should feel each other's attraction 
but be insensible to the force of the central sun. Is not 
sin then as unaccountable as it is deep-seated and spread- 
ing in our nature ? 

IV. But, fourthly, the same mystery of sin appears, when 
we consider that it has a power of resisting all known 
motives to a better life. This, again, is only another form 
of the remark, that we are kept by sin from pursuing our 
highest good ; but under this last head we view man as 
opposing God's plan for his salvation, while the other is 
more general. Here we see how causeless and unreason- 
able are the movements of sin, even when its bitterness 



Sin Unnatural. 95 

has been experienced, and the way of recovery been made 
known. If there had been no higher life disclosed to us 
in the Gospel, it would not seem so very strange that the 
calls of earthly prudence should be disregarded, that be- 
tween motives not vastly different in power, a weaker 
should prevail over a stronger, that earthly interests 
should be sacrificed to earthly pleasure ; for earth is but 
a point, and if we lose in the continuance of our enjoy- 
ment, when we are deaf to the voice of prudence and 
listen to pleasure, we yet gain in the intensity of it, we 
crowd more into a moment. But the marvel is, that the 
Gospel, with its mighty motives, appeals in vain to 
thousands who profess to have no doubt that it is from 
God. There is surely no such crowd of motives and 
reasons attendant on any other question as on that of the 
reception of Christianity. It is a question between life 
and death, in which our highest interests are concerned, 
which appeals to our hopes and fears, our consciences, 
our aspirations after a better life, our gratitude and love. 
It founds its appeals on the most remarkable facts in the 
universe, on the love of God to sinners, on the incarnation 
and death of Christ. We have the offer of pardon, 
peace, help to raise us up to God, deliverance from fear, 
support in death, and a blessed immortality. The way in 
which the Gospel comes to us is the most inviting possible 
—through a person who lived a life like ours on earth, 
and came into tender sympathy with us ; through a con- 
crete exhibition of everything true and good, not through 
doctrine and abstract statement. It has been the religion 
of our fathers, and of the holy in all time. It is venerable 
in our eyes. It is God's voice to us. Where else can so 
many motives, such power of persuasion be found ; and 
yet where else, in what other sphere where motives 
operate, is there so little success? Even Christians who 
have given themselves to the Gospel, confess that all these 
weighty considerations often fail to move them ; that they 



96 Sin Unnatural. 

stand still or turn backwards a great part of their lives, 
rather than make progress. So marvellous is the power 
of sin to deaden the force of motives to virtue, even in 
the minds of the best persons the world contains. 

Nor will the force of these considerations be escaped by 
saying that the motives fail to act because the Gospel 
which presents them is not believed. If by belief is meant 
faith in its divine origin, thousands have that faith, and 
would highly resent the charge of being without it, who 
are as little governed by the motives to which it appeals, 
as the professed infidel. Or if by belief is meant such an 
impression of the reality of the Gospel as makes its facts 
and truths motives of action, this is the very marvel of 
which we speak, that this dread assemblage of truths can 
be accepted as real, without exerting a motive power upon 
the soul, without awaking it from its dreams of worldli- 
ness. 

And, again, if one should say that the marvel is less- 
ened by the consideration that man is a creature of sense, 
over whom spiritual, intangible realities can have no 
power, or that he must be educated up by a long process 
to a capacity for spiritual life, I reply, that as far as we 
admit this we see another of the marvels of sin. Here is 
a creature, formed in God's image, yet sunk so low that 
his brutish nature has almost forgotten its relationship to 
its author ; the noblest, most essential powers of his soul 
lie so latent that they seem to be extinct. Is there not 
something very strange in this degradation, this locking 
up of the spirit, this unnatural fail ? But man is not a 
creature of sense with the spiritual powers wholly unexer- 
cised. All religions with their appeals to invisible gods, 
all ascetic and mystical efforts to become virtuous, the 
love of fame creating a world for the author or warrior 
after his death, all affection for the departed, ail systems 
of philosophy, all standards of duty above that of the 
Epicurean, show another capacity in man, that, namely, 



Sin Unnatural. 97 

to which the Gospel speaks, when it invites the soul to a 
fellowship with God and an inheritance in eternal life. 
That this capacity is so inactive and feeble under the Gos- 
pel, that is the wonder. Our nature can not explain this ; 
it can be referred only to the unnatural state of man as a 
sinner. 

V. Another of the marvels of sin is, that it can blind 
the mind to truth and evidence. Of this we see number- 
less examples in daily life. We see men who have been 
accustomed to judge of evidence within the same sphere 
in which religion moves, that of moral and historical 
proof, rejecting the Gospel, and afterwards acknowledging 
that they were wilfully prejudiced, that their objections 
ought to have had no weight with a candid mind. We 
see prejudice against the Gospel lurking under some 
plausible but false plea, which the man has never taken 
the pains to examine, although immense personal interests 
are involved. We see men rejecting the Gospel unthink- 
ingly, repeating some stale argument scarcely worth refu- 
tation, as if a great matter like the welfare of the soul 
might be trifled with, and made light of. We see men in 
a state of skepticism half their lives, resting on nothing, 
and willing so to live, rather than to make up their minds 
on the truth or the falsehood of Christianity. We see 
men claiming that they have sifted evidence with all can- 
dor, yet starting with an assumption to the prejudice of 
the Gospel which is obviously false. 

It is strange too, how quick the change is, when for 
some reason the moral or religious sensibilities are awak- 
ened after long slumber, how quick, I say, the change is 
from skepticism, or denial of the Gospel, or even hostility, 
to a state of belief. Multitudes of intelligent men have 
passed through such a conversion, and have felt ever 
afterwards that truth and evidence were sufficient, but 
that their souls were in a dishonest state. Now how is 
this? Is this a new prejudice which has seized upon 
5 



98 Sin Unnatural. 

them, at their conversion, and has their candid skepticism 
given way to dishonest faith ; or did sin, — that which in a 
thousand ways, through hope and fear, through indolence, 
through malignity, through love of pleasure, blinds and 
stupefies, did sin destroy their power of being candid be- 
fore? 

The power of sin to prevent the force of truth seems 
marvellous, especially when we consider the greatness of 
the risk run in rejecting the truth. It is possible that 
belief and the favor of God may go together. It is quite 
possible that character and happiness forever may depend 
upon receiving the truth and the motives which it carries 
in its train; thus personal interests, welfare, the possi- 
bility of virtue, God's enduring smile, all may depend 
upon belief in the Gospel. It certainly claims so much 
importance for its truth. Is now the state of that mind, 
which is thoughtless of its own interests for eternity, 
while it is alive to the smallest interests of time, a state 
of the highest candor and impartiality, or is it a state of 
prejudice or of lethargy so deep that nothing, not even 
the hazards of a future life, can shake it off ? And is not 
this a strange, unnatural state, when a soul that is made 
to watch over its own welfare a great way on ; a soul that 
can plan for ages after death ; a soul whose very selfish- 
ness ought to make it more intensely anxious to know 
what is the way of life ; that such a soul can treat truth 
like a play-thing ; that a man of intellect can grow old 
without sifting the evidence of the Gospel ; that many 
shrewd men can die with their hostility to it unquenched, 
as if it were the great foe of their peace ? 

VI. I only add, that the inconsistency of sin is mar- 
vellous in this respect ; that we allow and excuse in our- 
selves what we condemn in others. Men seem sometimes 
to have no moral sense, so open are their violations of 
morality, and so false their justifications of their conduct. 
And yet, when they come to pass censure upon others, 



Sin Unnatural. 99 

they show such a quickness to discern little faults, such 
an acquaintance with the rule of duty, such an unwilling- 
ness to make allowances, that you would think a new 
faculty had been imparted to their minds. These severe 
critics of others are all the while laying up decisions and 
precedents against themselves, yet when their cases come 
on, the judges reverse their own judgments. They con- 
demn men unsparingly for sins to which they are not 
tempted, although the radical principle in their own and 
in other's sins is confessedly the same. They blame and 
hate others for heart sins, such as envy, when they feel 
no compunction for this, the commonest of sins, in their 
own hearts. They complain of detraction and evil speak- 
ing, when they are injuring the good name and aspersing 
the character of others continually. Perhaps, after they 
have fallen into a sin which they had condemned in others 
before, they become, in that particular, somewhat milder 
censors. There is,, however, in other cases, a very constant 
condemnation and justification, by turns, of the very same 
fcins. Marvellous inconsistency ! Strange that the same 
mind balances between two standards of conduct so long. 
Why does not the man, whose own rules condemn himself, 
begin to sentence himself, or to excuse and pardon others ? 
Is not this an unnatural state of mind ; impossible, save 
on the supposition that it is effected by some strange per- 
version of its judgments ? 

Such are some of the points of view from which sin 
looks unnatural, a breach of the order of things, a mon- 
strous innovation introduced into the world. But we 
have not exhausted the subject. If we take a view, for 
an instant, of some of the affections and sentiments, the 
same thing may be made apparent. We have the feeling 
of reverence within us to lead us to worship, and yet 
while all false and foul divinities are worshiped, man 
flees from the face of the infinitely holy and beautiful 
God. We arc endowed with sympathy, that we may 



100 Sin Unnatural. 

rejoice in the joy, and grieve at the pain of others ; yet, 
what seems more natural, or is more common in the world 
than envy which grieves at the joy, and even malice, which 
rejoices at the pain of men ? It may be shown, that every 
sentiment under the control of principle and right reason, 
which is the natural condition of man, would harmonize 
with every other. But the social principles are all taken 
hold of by sin, and so disharmony seems to be written on 
our souls, and on society. Shame leads us to do things 
that are in reality shameful, and a sense of honor, things 
that are dishonorable. Selfishness reigning supreme, 
brings the individuals of society into hostility, and one 
society into hostility to another. Fear, covetousness, love 
of superiority, suspicion, and their kindred, make a state 
of disorder in the world seem so natural, that war, accord- 
ing to some thinkers, is the normal condition of man. 

We have thus looked at some of the phenomena which 
take place among men under the sway, of sin, phenomena 
common enough — alas ! far too common — but not natural 
nor regular actings of our souls. And this strangeness 
has always been felt to exist. Some have talked of two 
souls with different characteristics. Some, of opposite 
spiritual powers, leading a soul different ways. Some 
have done violence to their primary convictions, by de- 
nying the existence of sin, as if man became less of an 
enigma on that supposition; but sin remains, and the 
strange perversion remains, which it brings into the sys- 
tem of motives and into the intellectual state! Perver- 
sion! Do not words like this, and like wrong, that is 
something wrung or twisted, and many others, indicate the 
judgment which has been passed on sin by the makers 
of language, that is by human minds, as something op- 
posed to the right, the good, and the true ? 

And if sin is thus unnatural, thus strange in its work- 
ings, true faith in Christ, true godliness, union with God, 
on the other hand, is natural, is regular, is in harmony 



Sin Unnatural. 101 

with truth and reason. We become the followers of Christ, 
and in proportion as we are so, we pursue the highest 
good ; every good thing takes its place in our regard 
according to its importance ; our wills no longer remain 
under bondage to sin, while conscious of freedom ; every 
motive has its due sway over us ; every truth is sure of 
admission to our hearts ; we have the same standard for 
ourselves and for others, only throwing something into 
the scale in their favor as a make-weight to our own 
selfishness. We are brought, in short, into harmony with 
God, and thus put forth our natural powers in their 
natural direction. Then, as we look back on the old 
pathway of sin, it seems a delusion, a bondage, a marvel ; 
we are astonished at it, and conversion seems the only 
reasonable, the only natural thing. And when we look 
at a world under the control of sin, strange, inexplicable, 
sad, as its mysterious introduction among us seems, its 
fearful, unreasonable, all perverting power is the strange 
thing which ought to affect us most. Redemption, too, is 
strange. It is marvellous. But if sin has been discovered 
by us to be so perverse and marvellous a thing, we shall 
not estimate the outlay of divine power in redemption as 
too great. Christ and His cross are in proportion to sin ; 
and when we come to think of it, we shall sometimes 
feel as if the incarnation of the Son of God was not more 
wonderful than that free, responsible men, to whom their 
own interests are so valuable, should act without regard 
for every thing true and good ; that above all, they should 
reject this very redemption which Christ has provided for 
them.* 

* Compare Augustin do Civit. Dei xi. Cap. 17. 

" Sine dubio, ubi esset vitium malitke, natura mm vitiata preeoessit, 
vitium autem ita contra naturam est, ut mm possit nisi nooere naturae. 
Non itaque esset vitium recedere a Deo, nisi naturae, oujus id vitium 
est, potius competeret esse cum Deo. Quapropter etiam voluntas mala 
grande testimonium est natures bona)." 

And again, Lib. xii. Cap. 3 : 

"Naturae ill®, qua ox mal® voluntatis vitio vitiatsa sun*, in quantum 
vitiosa) sunt, make sunt; in quantum autem Qatur® .sunt, bona) sunt." 



SERMON VII. 

SIN NOT SELF-REFORMATORY. 

Isaiah i. 5. Why should ye he stricken any more? Ye will revolt 
more and more : the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 

I have lately called your attention to two aspects of 
sin, to its dreadful power of propagating itself, and to its 
being a violence against nature. I invite your attention 
to-day, to a third aspect, that there is no tendency in sin 
to cure itself, or that sin has in itself and its consequences 
no self-reforming power. 

It might seem, if sin can be called unnatural and mon- 
strous, that nature could shake it off, and return to her 
own law. It might seem also, that the results of sin 
would cure the sinner of his evil tendencies, and send him 
back on the path of wisdom. Do we not learn continu- 
ally by our mistakes ? Are not men made better by the 
faults they have committed and the evils they have suf- 
fered ? "What is more common than that the beginning 
of a religious life proceeds from some out-breaking sin, ( 
which shows to a man for the first time his true weakness 
of character, and leads him in humble shame to the grace 
of the Gospel ? 

We grant that a man in a state of sin may be led to 
abandon some sin, or some excess of sin, from considera- 
tions of prudence. We grant also that affliction softens 
many characters which it fails to lead to sincere repent- 
ance, by lowering their pride, or by sobering their views 
of life. We have no doubt that the seeds of a better life 
are sown amid the storms and floods of calamity. And 
for the Christian it is certain that sorrow is a principal 
means of growth in holiness. Nay, it may even happen 
102 



Sin not Self- Reformatory. 103 

that a sin committed by a Christian may in the end make 
him a better man, as Peter, after his denial of Christ and 
the knowledge he thus gained of his feebleness, grew in 
real strength as much as he declined in self-confidence, 
and was able the better to strengthen his brethren. 

We admit, also, and rejoice to admit, that a life of sin, 
being a life of unrest and disappointment, cannot fail of 
being felt to be such, so that a sense of inward want, a 
longing for redemption, enters into the feelings of many 
hearts that are not willing to confess it. Many persons 
who have not reached the true peace of the Gospel, sigh 
for it ; many feel the weakness of the disease, without 
applying to the physician; many reform their lives in 
Pharisaical strictness, without coming to Christ: and many 
come to Christ, being led to Him by this inward unrest, 
this inward void which a life of sin has produced. 

But all this does not oppose the view which we take 
of sin, that it contains within itself no radical cure, no real 
reformation. Man is not led by sin into holiness. The 
means of recovery lie outside of the region of sin, beyond 
the reach of experience, — they lie in the free grace of 
God, which sin very often opposes and rejects, when it 
comes with its healing medicines and its assurances of 
deliverance. The most which prudence can do, acting in 
view of the experienced consequences of sin, is to plaster 
over the exterior, to avoid dangerous habits, to choose 
deep-seated sins in lieu of such as lie on the surface. 
Exchanging thus Pharisaical pride for vice, respectable 
sin for vulgar sin, sin that does not injure for sin that in- 
jures body and good name, it seems to the unthinking to 
have worked a marvellous cure. But there is no true 
reformation, no giving of a new form to the soul, in the 
case. The physician lias changed the seat of the malady, 
he has not driven it out of the constitution. 

Now that sin works out no cure of itself, that sin by no 



104 Sin not Self-Meformatory. 

process, direct or indirect, can purify the character, will 
appear 

First, from the self-propagating nature of sin, to which 
your attention was called some time since. If sin has the 
nature to spread and strengthen its power, if by repetition 
habits are formed which are hard to be broken, if habits of 
indulgence in one kind of sin pave the way for other kinds, 
if the blindness of mind which supervenes adds to the 
ease of sinning, and takes away from the force of reform- 
atory motives, if discouragement and the feeling that all 
moral strength is gone render return upon one's step 
more difficult, if sin spreading from one person to another 
increases the evil of society, and therefore reduces the 
power of each one of its members to rise above the general 
corruption, do not all these considerations show that sin 
provides no cure for itselfj that there is, without divine 
intervention, no remedy for it at all? If sin at once 
extends its sway in the soul, and weakens the power of 
existing motives, whence can a cure come, unless from 
new motives and from influences of a divine origin? Can 
any one show that there is any maximum of strength in 
sin, so that after some length of continuance, after the 
round of experiences is run over, after wisdom is gained, 
its force abates, and the soul enters on a work of self- 
restoration ? Alas ! this does not verify itself in the life 
of men. Is it the nature of virtue after long persistence 
to chop round like the wind, and give place to vice? Can 
vice be shown from what we see of character to have a 
contrary quality? 

II. The same thing will appear from the fact, that the 
mass of the persons who are truly recovered from sin, 
ascribe their cure to some external cause, — nay, I should 
say to some extraordinary cause, which sin had nothing to 
do with bringing into existence. Ask any one who seems 
to you to have a sincere principle of godliness, what it 
was that wrought the change in his case, by which he for- 



Sin not Self-Meformatory. 105 

sook his old sins. Will he tell you that it was sin leading 
him round, by the experience -of its baneful effects, to a 
life of holiness ? Will he even refer it to sense of obliga- 
tion awakened by the law of God ? Or will he not rather 
ascribe it to the perception of God's love in pardoning 
sinners through His Son ? Nor will he stop there ; he will 
go beyond the outward motive of truth to the inward ope- 
ration of a Divine Spirit. Somehow religious persons 
agree in attributing the change of their life to a cause as 
remote as possible from sin. Sin, by no means, wrought 
the transformation. Law did not. Even the unaided 
truth of the Gospel did not. But if sin could cure, if it 
did cure itself, we should find another conviction in the 
minds of those who were under its treatment ; we should 
not see this unanimity. You cannot make those who have 
spent the most thought about sin, and had the deepest 
experience of its quality, admit, that spiritual death of 
itself works a spiritual resurrection. 

Moreover, were it so, you could not admit the necessity 
of the Gospel. What is the use of medicine, if the disease, 
after running its course, strengthens the constitution, so as 
to secure it against maladies in the future ? Can truth, 
with all its motives, do as much ? If, then, the expe- 
rience of sin, by some wonderful law of nature, is fraught 
with such a benign efficacy, the Gospel is officious in its 
offers of help ; it were better that the human race be left 
alone, until it find itself, through its sins, advanced to 
a position of superior virtue. 

To this it may be added, that the prescriptions of the 
Gospel themselves often fail to cure the soul : not half of 
those who are brought up under the Gospel, are truly 
Christians. This again shows how hard the cure of sin is. 
For the motives drawn from the Gospel do not operate 
against nature, but with it, and if nature has of itself a 
restorative power, they ought only to accelerate (lie pro- 
cess. Why should nature rejeel them? Why should 
5* 



106 Si?i not Self-Reformatory. 

they fail in any case ? Is it not a proof of the severity of 
the disease of sin, that they often have no good effect 
whatever ? 

III. We do not find that inordinate desire is rendered 
moderate by the experience that it fails to satisfy the soul. 
A most important class of sins are those of excited desire, 
or, as the Scriptures call them, of lust. The extravagance 
of our desires — the fact that they grow into undue strength, 
and reach after wrong objects, is owing to our state of sin 
itself, to the want of a regulative principle of godliness. 
When the spirit of love and obedience is absent, something 
must take its place, or there will be a vacuum in the soul, 
which is abhorrent to our nature. Our individual natures 
determine what this master-passion shall be. Is it the 
love of money ? This love, indulged, grows in strength, 
and grasps at more than it ever possesses. But, inasmuch 
as no such gratification can fill the soul, inasmuch as man 
was made to be nourished by angels' food, and not by the 
husks which the swine do eat, there must come a time of 
dissatisfaction, a feeling of emptiness, an apprehension of 
coming want. How is it now with the soul which has 
thus pampered its earthly desires, and starved its heavenly? 
Does it cure itself of its misplaced affections ? If it could, 
all the warnings and contemplations of the moral philoso- 
phers might be thrown to the winds, and we should only 
need to preach intemperance in order to secure temper- 
ance ; to feed the fire of excess, that it might the more 
speedily burn out ; to place temptations in the way of the 
youth, that he might become a roue at his prime, and so 
have an old age of moderation before him ? But who 
would risk such an experiment? Does the aged miser 
relax his hold on his money-bags, and settle down on the 
lees of benevolence ? Does the worn-out voluptuary, even 
when his senses are blunted, shake off his vices and become 
a new man ? Is this the natural process ? Is it so common 
as to be looked on without wonder ? Or, rather, when the 
grace of God — a cause from without and extraordinary — 



Sin not Self-Reformatory. 107 

penetrates into the heart of such a man, do not men look 
on his change with suspicion, as a kind of compulsory 
divorce from his vices ; or, if he is admitted to be a sincere 
penitent, is it not regarded as among the marvellous re- 
sults of Divine grace ? 

No ! my friends, think not that nature or some law of 
the mind breaks the chains of desire so easily, when a life 
or long years of a life have hardened the bondage. 
Christ knew of no such thing when He said " How hardly 
shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
God." Calculate not too confidently on the moral powers 
of a mind which has spent all its strength on sinful 
desires. It is not so very easy a thing for a supremely 
selfish man to renounce himself, even with the offers of 
the Gospel before his eyes*. The soul must take a leap 
almost in the dark ; must in its own apprehension run 
the risk of being stripped of everything without gaining 
anything. " Give up my supreme good ? Why not ask 
me. to annihilate myself? How do I know, who have 
never had it in my bosom, that this new affection, this 
love of God to which you call me, is not as much smoke 
as that old desire which has reigned in my members ?" 
Such are some of the suspicions witli which a jaded, sated 
soul will look on the invitations of the Gospel, even while 
it owns its want of inward peace. Without the gospel 
what promise of good is sufficient to stem or alter the 
desires of such a soul? 

IV. The pain or loss, endured as a fruit of sin, is not, 
of itself, reformatory. I have already said that under 
the Gospel such wages of sin are often made use of by 
the divine Spirit to sober, subdue, and renovate the cha- 
racter. Many have been enabled to say that before they 
were afflicted they went astray, but that now they keep 
God's word. And this benefit from afflictions is by no 
means confined to those trials which are properly the 
direct consequences of sin, but. belongs to all the sufferings 



108 Sin not Self- Reformatory. 

of this earthly state, whatever be their source. But even 
under the Gospel, how many, instead of being reformed by 
the punishment of their sins, are hardened, embittered, 
filled with complaints against divine justice and human 
law. The tenants of prisons, under the old system of 
stern infliction, were rather corrupted than made better by 
confinement, by every display of the justice and indigna- 
tion of society. The Jewish system was one where justice 
preponderated, yet although grace was not there ex- 
cluded, we find continual complaints on the part of the 
prophets that the people remained hardened through all 
the discipline of God, although it was fatherly chastise- 
ment, which held out hops of restoration to the divine 
favor. " Why should you be stricken any more? ye will 
revolt more and more," says Isaiah in the words of our 
text. But a passage from the prophet Amos may stand 
instead of all others. "I have given you cleanness of 
teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your 
places, yet ye have not turned unto Me, saith the Lord. 
And also I have withholden the rain from you when 
there were yet three months to the harvest — yet have ye 
not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. I have smitten 
you with blasting and mildew ; when your gardens and 
your vineyards and your olive trees increased, the palmer 
worm devoured them ; yet have ye not returned unto Me, 
saith the Lord. I have sent among you the pestilence 
after the manner of Egypt — yet have ye not returned 
unto Me, saith the Lord. I have overthrown some of 
you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye 
were as a fire-brand plucked out of the burning ; yet have 
ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. Therefore thus 
will I do to thee, O Israel ; and because I will do this 
unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel." 

Such was a large experience of the efficacy of punish- 
ment under the Jewish economy. Turn now to a state of 
things where the divine clemency is wholly unknown or 



Sin not Self- Reformatory. 109 

seen only in its feeblest glimmerings. Will naked law, 
will pure justice work a reform to which divine clemency- 
is unequal ? 

V. Remorse of conscience is not reformatory. Perhaps 
we ought to say that remorse in its design was put into 
the soul as a safeguard against sin, in order to prevent the 
new offender from repeating his transgressions. But in 
the present state of man remorse has no such power for 
the following reasons: 

First, it is dependent for its power, and even for its exist- 
ence, on the truth of which the mind is in possession. Of 
\tself it teaches nothing ; it infers no general rules of mo- 
rality from single instances, no law of action from separate 
actions; it rather obeys the truth which is before the mind 
at the time. If now the mind lies within the reach of any 
means by which it can ward off the force of truth or put 
falsehood in the place of truth, sin will get the better of 
remorse, the dread of remorse will cease to set the soul 
upon its guard. 

We say, secondly, that every sinner has such means of 
warding off the force of truth, and so of weakening the 
power of self-condemnation, at his command. The sophis- 
tries which a sinful soul plays off upon itself, the excuses 
which palliate, if they do not justify transgression, are in- 
numerable. Admit the plea that a strong temptation 
renders sin venial, or that a man has no freedom to do 
otherwise than he has done, or that pleasure is the end of 
existence, or that inconsideration is an excuse for wrong- 
doing, and what becomes of remorse ? It has for the pre- 
sent lost its sting. The guilty soul learns to trine with it. 

But, again, remorse according to the operation of the 
law of habit is a sentiment which loses its strength as the 
sinner continues to sin. It is benumbed like other sensi- 
bilities which are violated, like pity, which is blunted by 
acts of cruelty, or sympathy, which is undermined by the 
indulgence of envy: when we injure the powers of our 



110 Sin not Self-Beformatory. 

souls in their legitimate exercise, they take a terrible re- 
venge upon us by neglecting to do their work ; the senti- 
nels have been tampered with by a traitor within, and 
the camp is open to the enemy. What good are you to 
get from the voice of conscience, if you have enfeebled its 
power so that it can be scarcely heard ? Will the whis- 
per of reproof reform you when the loud thunder could 
not? 

But, ones more, suppose that all this benumbing of con- 
science is temporary, as indeed it may well be ; suppose 
that through these years of sinning it has silently gathered 
its electric power, but, when the soul is hackneyed in sin 
and life is in the dregs, will give a terrible shock — will 
this work reform? "Will remorse then take its seat as an 
admonisher, and not rather as a judge and a doomster in 
the great criminal court of God? "Will there be courage 
to undertake a work then for which the best hopes, the 
greatest strength of resolution, and the help of God are 
wanted ? No ! discouragement then must prevent reform. 
The sorrow of the world worketh death. The most hope- 
less of all persons is he who has put darkness for light, 
and stupefied his conscience for years with success, until 
some crisis, some danger of death comes. Then the cry will 
generally be, even under a Gospel of mercy — "It is too 
late." 

VI. Finally, the experience of sin brings the sOul no 
nearer to religious truth. Truth is the treasury from 
which our active powers draw their instruments or motives 
for the government of the life. Xow if sin, as we learned 
its nature and results by experience, brought us nearer 
and nearer to the truth which can regulate our character, 
and deepened the impressions which our condition here 
below ought to make upon us, then the gray-haired sinner 
of a life-time were worthy of all envy, and sin would con- 
tain in itself, instead of a sting at the last, a Gospel of 
mercy. But it is not so, as is plain from what we see of 
life and know of our own selves. 



Sin not Self- Reformatory. Ill 

For sin, amongst other of its effects, makes us more 
afraid of God or more indifferent to Him. The first in- 
ward change wrought by sin is to beget a feeling of separa- 
tion from God ; we have, by sinning, severed our interests 
from those of the moral universe over which God reigns, 
and we know that the good of the universe cannot be 
sacrificed to our wishes ; — nay more, we perceive that our 
selfish desires oppose that good and the will of the great 
Ruler. We may not have reached this feeling by our rea- 
son, but from the first movements of remorse it is a feeling, 
almost a moral instinct with us. Adam and his wife, as 
soon as they sinned, hid themselves from God, among the 
trees of the garden. 

This being so, how are we to attain to a true knowledge 
of religion? Is there any method, without taking into 
account God, the great factor? But the sinful soul turns 
from Him in fear with an instinctive feeling that IJe is an 
enemy. Must not, then, almost of necessity, a false sys- 
tem concerning God and man be embraced rather than a 
true? And when such a system takes possession of the 
mind, will it not be harder to find out the truth, than it 
was before? Perhaps now one great point is gained, 
namely that the dread of God is abated : — will it be easy 
to break up such pleasant slumbers and acknowledge the 
terrible truth, that neither God nor the order of the world 
can fail to be an enemy to the man who clings to his sins? 

Or suppose what happens under the Gospel, when sin 
and the purpose of future repentance live together in a 
worldly life, that a person has become quite indifferent 
to God ; he is not afraid of God because the Gospel of 
mercy shines upon the world ; he does not love God, be- 
cause all higher love is buried under a load of sin, — he is 
a neutral. Is this a state where the experience of sin will 
teach the truth ? Must we n6t say here, as in the last 
case, that this attitude is taken in order to have quiet in 
sin, and that it requires the strongest motives, the strongest 



112 Sin not Self- Reformatory. 

impressions to break up this false peace ? Or if we should 
say that a real hostility lies concealed under this indiffer- 
ence we should only make the case worse. The soul in- 
curs the guilt of opposition to God, but continues to escape 
the conviction of it. This is plainly no good condition 
for exercising honesty of mind in view of the truth. 

To this we may add that a habit of skepticism is con- 
tracted in a course of sinning, which it is exceedingly 
hard to lay aside. It became necessary in order to pal- 
liate sin and render self-reproach less bitter, as we have 
already seen, to devise excuses for the indulgence of 
wrong desires. These pretexts are half believed, they are 
not simply taken up at the moment of sin and then laid 
aside, but they acquire some positive influence over the 
mind, they fill it at least with doubts of which sin has 
the benefit. In this way there grows up a skepticism in 
regard to the great rules of conduct. But there is no 
stopping at this point. We cannot doubt concerning the 
rules of morality, without stretching these doubts into re- 
ligious truth, both natural and revealed. The skepticism 
then must run through all those classes of truth which 
can furnish moral and religious motives. Is then such 
a habit easy to be shaken off? Is it easy, when habits of 
sin have brought on habits of skepticism, to become per- 
fectly candid, and to throw aside the doubts of a life-time, 
which are often specious and in a certain sense honestly 
entertained ? Will it not be hard to break up the part- 
nership between the mind and the heart, between falsehood 
and sin, so long as each supports the other? The Scriptures 
teach us that "evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, 
deceiving and being deceived." They deceive themselves 
and are deceived by themselves as well as deceive others. 
Thus they cut off the power of motives. We cannot 
reach truth by the experience of sin any more than we 
can make good legislators out of law-breakers and culprits. 



Sin not Self-Beformatory. 113 

The blindness of the mind is the best security against re- 
formation. 

From the course of thought in this discourse it appears 
in the first place that our present life shows no favor to the 
opinion that sin is a necessary stage in the development of 
character towards perfection. This opinion draws so 
little support from what we know of man that it deserves 
to be called a chimera, a bare theory devised to get rid of 
a difficulty in the system of the world, to wit, the permis- 
sion of evil. No reason can be given, which is valid, why 
a finite being cannot remain innocent and holy, as the 
holy angels are, and as we are assured by the Scriptures 
that Christ was. No argument can be derived from ex- 
perience to prove that sin, when once begun, works out its 
own cure. The cures of it, which have seemed radical, 
have come from abroad, from a system of grace, from the 
free act of God, or at least from a belief in the divine for- 
giveness. The tendency of sin, as life shows, is to grow 
blinder, more insensible, less open to truth, less capa- 
ble of goodness. If, then, any one should say that in 
spite of all this the soul in some other life will turn right 
about on its course, we shall not argue with him, any 
more than if he should say that the spirits of the blessed 
will have wings or will inhabit the sun. 

And again the experience of this world throws light, or, 
I should rather say, darkness, on the condition of the 
sinner who dies impenitent. There is no tendency in the 
experience of his whole life towards reform. How can it be 
shown that there will be hereafter? If he has contracted 
guilt, and Divine justice reigns over him, will not his cir- 
cumstances be worse then than now ; more unpropitious 
for knowing the truth, more fitfed to indurate him in sin ? 
In this world Divine compassion in Christ shines on men, 
and wins many over from sin ; but mercy in its very idea 
is a free act which may have a limit: who can tell us that 
death is not that limit? The sinner goes away from tho 



114 Sin not Self- Reformatory. 

world with a perverted will, with selfish affections pre- 
dominant, in the full tide of his ungodliness ? Who can 
tell that these are not a part of his soul, and who cannot 
tell, that with such a soul, whether he sees the full blaze 
of truth or wanders in new errors, he must be miserable ? 
Then, lastly, our subject points, as with a finger that 
can be seen, to the best time for getting rid of sin. All 
we have said, is but a commentary on that text, " exhort 
one another daily while it is called to-day, lest any of you 
be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." Do not think 
that the swearer will become reverent from the practice of 
profanity, or the drunkard, sober from the thirst he has ac- 
quired for strong drink and the evils he falls into, or the 
revengeful, forgiving from the torment of his vindictive- 
ness, or the selfish man, benevolent from the indulgence 
of evil affections, or the ungodly man, godly from ne- 
glecting and disobeying God. Do not think, you who are 
young, that a little more acquaintance with the evil of 
life will be of use to you. Far from this, it will lead you, 
like Adam, to try to hide from God. You will lose your 
innocence, lose your peace, lose your soul, and for what? 
To discover how easy is the course of sin, and how fast it 
grows when you run into temptation. O, that Divine 
grace would make its own use of your past sins — to humble 
you and show you that their end is death, before your 
standard of character has fallen too low, and the blind- 
ness of sin is too great for recovery. Sin is now shaping 
your character; he is adding stroke after stroke for the 
final countenance and form. If you wait, all will be 
fixed ; his work will be done. 



SERMON VIII. 

SIN MEASUKED BY THE DISPOSITION, NOT BY THE ACT. 

1 John iii. 15. Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer. 

These are harsh words, some will say, and many will 
deny that they are just. " I hate such a one, it is true, 
but I would not harm him for the world. There is surely 
a wide interval between the feeling of rancor or even 
the bitter lasting quarrel, and the act of Cain who was of 
that wicked one and slew his brother. Why come to a 
reader or hearer who is consciously incapable of acts of 
injury, and say to him such severe things, as if on pur- 
pose to make him odious to himself, if he puts faith in 
them, and so to render him desperate ?" 

As for the spirit of the words it is enough to say at 
present that they proceed from the apostle of love, and 
that, if true, they ought to be known. Moreover, if you 
find fault with him, you must find the same fault with 
Him from whom he learned his religion. Does not Christ 
say that " whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her 
hath committed adultery with her already in his heart?" 
The measure of the desire or imagination is the sinful in- 
dulgence to which it can lead, as in the other case the 
measure of the hatred is the injury to a brother man. 

But besides this, our feeling that we are incapable of this 
or that sin is not to be entirely trusted, so that we ought to 
be slow before we reproach passages like this with being 
unfair descriptions of our nature and of ourselves. There 
was a man once to whom a prophet foretold that he 
would be king over Syria and would do immense evil to 
the children of Israel. "Is thy servant a dog-," he 
replied, that " I should do this great thing?" But on the 

115 



116 Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 

morrow lie murdered his sovereign, and reigned in his 
stead. So too our great poet portrays to us a man, 
loyal, upright hitherto, conscious of no secret treachery, 
into whose mind the infernal powers sent the thought, 
that he, now Thane of Cawdor, should be king hereafter. 
The thought ripened into a wish, the wish into a plan: he 
murdered his king, when asleep and a guest under the 
protection of the rights of hospitality, and from this dark 
beginning he waded on through blood, to retain what he 
had grasped, until he worked out his own ruin. 

So then, let us calmly look at the words of the apostle, 
without taxing them hastily with harshness. Let us feel 
that they may represent human nature under a true light, 
and may apply to us, unless ours is an exceptional case. 

The apostle says not that all hatred will end in murder, 
— -far from it — nor that all hatred is equally interne and 
equally reckless, nor that hatred which bursts out into 
great crime may not imply a worse state of soul than 
such as remains within, and does no obvious harm to 
others. Nor does he intend to confine the murderous 
quality to positive haired. Want of love, hardened selfish- 
Bess, acting on calculation with no rage or wrath in it, 
may be as deadly, as murderous, as malignity or revenge. 
He had just said, " he that loveth not his brother abideth 
in death." He might have said with truth " he that 
loveth not his brother is a murderer," for want of love 
and hatred are only forms of one common character, 
which in the one case has excited feeling in its company, 
and in the other shows itself as bald self-interest. 

The Apostle teaches us in these words, that evil lies in 
the heart, and that the evil there, which meets with some tem- 
porary or some lasting hindrance, differs not in kind from 
that which is ripened by opportunity. It may be forever 
dormant as far as the notice of man is concerned. It 
may never burst forth into the poisonous flower of wicked 
action, yet the hatred within and the hatred in the 



Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 117 

wicked action are one and the same, one quality runs 
through both. The powder that is explosive and the 
powder that explodes do not differ. 

Need I show the justness of this teaching which John 
borrows from his Lord ? Unless evil begins only when the 
feeling bursts into action ; unless there is no inward sin and 
no other form of sin besides particular intended acts of it ; 
unless the quality of the feeling and of the desire, however 
excited or inordinate, is neither good nor evil until a 
resolution is made to commit outward transgressions ; there 
must be evil tempers, vicious propensities, wrong desires, 
a bad heart. The hatred or the lust may be repressed, 
and that is a praiseworthy discipline. But if there be no 
principle reigning in the soul, which will introduce love 
instead of hatred and change the nature of the soul 
itself, the thought and the act will be both evil, and the 
act will be the measure of the thought And this is the 
doctrine of all moralists, however they may differ about 
the essential character and moral power of human nature. 
They hold that the way to prevent crime is to bring a 
new set of thoughts or motives before the soul, that by an 
abhorrence of evil, or by a sense of the beauty of virtue, 
or in some other way the forms of crime may be prevented. 
And they all teach that nothing effectual is secured for 
the improvement of human character, until the soul itself 
is conformed to a perfect standard. 

It is true, notwithstanding what we have said, that the 
strength of an active principle in human nature, such as 
hatred leading to revenge or lust leading to self-indul- 
gence, is measured — somewhat rudely it may be — by its out- 
break into forms of sin which conscience and society con- 
demn. It is just as we measure the power of a flood by 
its breaking down a dam or transporting heavy masses 
to a distance. There are restraining influences which 
secure human society from the explosion of injurious pas- 
sions, so that such a crime as murder, common enough, 



118 Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 

if you gather up all the instances of it in a year, will 
excite wonder and awe in the place where it is committed. 
It seems, as men contemplate the injury, as they judge of 
it by the rage of the wicked mind, by the want of an im- 
pulse they find within themselves to a similar deed, by the 
vastness of the wrong, or by the terrible condition of a 
society where such crimes are of daily frequency, that it 
is out of the common course of things, and that it presents 
human nature to us in a new light. And in truth, it is 
in an important sense, an extraordinary crime, that is, a 
crime which is not produced by the ordinary state o. 
human souls. But so is an earthquake in one sense an 
extraordinary phenomenon, while yet the forces which 
shake the world are not new but as old and as natural as 
the earth itself. We may calculate with certainty that 
the greater part of the malignity and revenge in human 
breasts will not lead to murder, for we know what 
obstructions sin encounters before it finds a vent in enor- 
mous crimes. "We know that fear of consequences, con- 
science, respect for public opinion, pity, are as permanent 
and universal as sin itself is, and that they are the dam 
and the banks which keep the stream of unregulated 
selfishness from sweeping over society. Yet though we 
call the crime extraordinary, whenever it occurs we trace 
it back to some principle or habit. That man who com- 
mitted homicide was subject to great fits of rage which he 
took no pains to restrain, or his natural heat was in- 
creased by strong drink, or he had such a covetous temper 
that he was tempted by it into robbery and murder. All 
this is obviously just. 

But with all this, we have a right to say, that the limit to 
which a passion, such as hatred or lust, leads, is a fair 
measure of its general power. When hatred leads to mur- 
der, it is no exceptional case. The extreme limit is the 
measure of its tendency and its natural strength. This is 
the measure which the Apostle applies to it : he that 



Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 119 

hateth is a murderer, because hatred destroys all the hap- 
piness of others that is in its way, whether the happi- 
ness consist in a good name, or in riches, or in life. Ha- 
tred has that in itself that it rejoices in the evil of others, 
and, in certain circumstances, will assuredly occasion that 
evil. 

We apply to the strength of hatred, or some other evil pas- 
sion, the same measurement which we apply to the capacities 
of the mind. A man of genius seems at one time to be 
inert and without creative power : at another, he will pro- 
duce a poem or a picture that the world admires. We 
measure his genius by his best productions, by what he 
does in the most favorable circumstances, not by the va- 
cancy of his dreamy or inactive hours, where thought is 
gathering strength for a new flight. Why not judge of 
sin, and especially of hatred, after the same fashion? 
What it can do in its unimpeded moments, when the chains 
are off its neck, and the fetters and manacles are cast 
from hand and foot, is the measure of its deranged power. 
It lay inactive, half asleep, until the fatal moment came, 
when all temptations seemed to plead at once, and all re- 
straining voices were silent. Now it shows what it can do, 
what its true strength is. Now we see it in its simple, un- 
checked energy, while, for the most part, it lay before in 
a kind of chemical union with the other principles that 
govern mankind. 

The justness of the Apostle's words is shown by the awful 
quickness with which resolutions are sometimes taken to com- 
mit great crimes. Nothing is more fearful and awful about 
our nature than this rapid rush of a human soul from 
seeming innocence to full-blown guilt. With one bound 
the soul leaps over all those blessed restraints that tic us 
to outward virtue and to the respect of mankind. We 
flee into crime, as if the dogs of sinful desire were on us, 
and we sought the outward act as a relief from the agita- 
tion and war within the soul. So strange do some such 



120 Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 

historical crimes appear, that they look like the sway of 
destiny. A divine Nemesis, or Ate, urged the man into 
Belf-ruin. The tragedy of life was not accomplished by 
his own free will. And when the deed is done, unthinking 
men will ascribe it to the force of circumstances, as if cir- 
cumstances could have any effect, independently of the 
passion or selfish desire itself. And the criminal himself 
may think that he was hardly a moral agent in the deed ; 
that his own power of resistance was destroyed by tempta- 
tion against his will ; or, that others, the most respectable 
men in his society, would do the same. To all of which, 
we reply, that the consent of his soul was his sin ; that his 
sin was weakness ; that if he had wanted strength really, 
and prayed for it, it would have come down out of heaven, 
and that whether others would have acted like him or not 
is a point of no importance. Perhaps they would. We do 
not charge him with being so much worse than others, as 
his murder, or his lust, is enormous beyond their acts. We 
charge on human nature, when it hates, the same quality 
of guilt it would have when its hate bursts into act. We 
charge this on all who hate, or do not love, in order that 
they may know what they are, and may come to the Divine 
Christ, whose love is the life of the world. 

I will illustrate this leap of a soul into sin by a single 
case, the particulars of which I may not repeat with en- 
tire accuracy, having to trust to a somewhat imperfect 
recollection. There was in London, a few years since, a 
German tailor, who was, probably, not more dissolute 
than hundreds of others in such a vast city, a mild, in- 
offensive man, whom nobody thought capable of dark 
deeds of wickedness. He found himself in a car of an 
underground railroad, in company with a wealthy man. 
They were alone, and yet, as the cars had a number of 
stopping-places in their five or six miles' course, every 
few minutes a new passenger might come into their com- 
partment. They were alone, I say, for a passenger had 



Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act 121 

left them, and the door was shut. Now, in the interval 
of three or four minutes, this man had murdered the 
wealthy man by his side, had seized his purse and watch, 
and in the hurry taken his hat by mistake, and had left 
the train the instant it reached the next station. He fled 
to this country, was seized on his landing, was found to 
have the dead man's hat and watch, was handed over to 
the English authorities, carried back, tried, and sent to his 
execution. How terrible was this speed of crime ! No 
whirlwind or water-spout, no thunder-cloud flying through 
mid-heaven could represent its swiftness, and yet here 
there was nothing unaccountable, nothing monstrous. He 
himself had been no prodigy of sin, nor was he now. 
The crime was an epitome of his life, a condensed extract 
of his character. We may safely say, that what took a 
moment to resolve and to execute, was not the growth of 
those moments. It lay in his soul, in its selfishness, 
which was all ready to sacrifice the rights, the life, of a 
brother man, for the gratification of a wicked desire. 
You or I would not have done this, my hearer, but we 
have that within us, perhaps, that might lead to the do- 
ing of it. We are of the same clay. 

And again, the Ajiostle's principle is vindicated by the 
rapid deterioration which we often observe in the lives of 
particular men. There are some who seem to remain at a 
fixed point all their lives, growing neither worse nor 
better, and meeting all the demands which the laws of 
social life impose upon them. There are others, who, with 
no external change, are growing better within, are more 
under the sway of principle and of right emotions. 
There is a third class, whose lives resemble a gentle 
stream, that suddenly pours over rocks ; the outward 
manifestations of character have become wholly now. 
From a life of temperance, or purity, or peace, they run 
over into one of intemperance, lewdness, or violence. It 
seems as if they had only covered up their sins before, as 




122 Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act 

if an evil life could not begin, all of a sudden, but the 
habits of siu must have been suppressed, perhaps, for a 
long period. But it is not so. They have not grown sud- 
denly worse, but some natural motives, which swayed them 
before, have given way to other natural motives which 
were for a time counteracted. Self-indulgence was coun- 
teracted by prudence or by conscience, hatred was kept 
down or shut up in the breast by public opinion. Mean- 
while changes of life, more liberty of action, greater 
means of self-gratification, new forms of society, new sen- 
timents and opinions, make the road of temptation leading 
to outward sin easier. I do not deny that an outbreak 
of sin also has a tendency to deteriorate character still 
further, as we see especially in the case of drunkards, 
who, losing their own respect and that of their society, 
become desperate and reckless, weighing the pleasure of 
drinking against that which they have lost, and resorting 
to that pleasure to still the regrets of their souls. But 
what I wish to say is, that the deterioration went on in 
silence before the act of outward sin, or was the result of a 
choice of sin, against known and estimated motives for 
right-doing. The sin, when it appeared in a palpable 
shape, was not of a new kind. Their characters had not 
become monstrous, and borne fruit, of which before they 
were incapable. They were not new men, as men are said 
to be when they put forth new love towards God, when 
they return to Him from a life of sin in the spirit of 
obedience. But all happened in the regular way of 
development, not by a fated pre-arranged plan which 
would excuse them, and take them out of the ranks of 
responsible beings, but by a development in which their 
own free choice went with the laws of character. 

According to this view of man, there is nothing strange 
when hatred culminates in murder, there is no new prin- 
ciple injected, there is, in reality, no sudden worsening of 
the character. It is natural, not monstrous or morbid, 



Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 123 

that he who indulges hatred in his heart should yield, 
when he is tempted to manifest it in the life. The deed 
is the expression of the feeling, as words are of thoughts. 
There may be a long silence of passion, and the first you 
know of it, it may cry aloud, it may hurry into publicity 
as full-grown crime. 

I add, again, that if in any given ease it were certain that 
sinful affections would be suppressed and be prevented from 
going out into sinful deeds, the apostle's principle would still 
be true. There are thousands of people who indulge 
malignant passions and commit no murder, to one who is 
actually led to this extremity of crime. It is wholly im- 
probable that the well-educated, the intelligent, the pru- 
dent, the compassionate, will be led into any outrageous 
violence towards their fellow-men, even if they allow 
malevolent emotions, such as envy and pride, to have 
dominion over them. But this is quite consistent with 
the words of John. The spirit of the extreme crime is 
in the unblamed malice or the unobserved envy. It is 
neutralized, as the oxygen of air is by nitrogen. The 
two in mechanical union form an innocuous atmosphere, 
and yet we know that oxygen alone would be a principle 
of death. So hate in the heart is a deadly affection al- 
though counteracted, and although it may be always 
counteracted. 

1. In closing this discourse I wish to remark in the first 
place, that sin deceives us until it comes into manifestation. 
Men are apt to think that they are good enough, because 
no indications of a corrupt character are shown in their 
lives. And then, when the time of trial comes and they 
yield, they excuse themselves because temptation is so 
strong and so sudden. In neither case docs their mora] 
judgment conform to the true state of things. Principle 
means that which will stand the test, when native character- 
istics which were on its side have turned against it. Tho 
measure of principle is the strength of resistance to 



124 Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 

attacks of temptation, and if hatred or lust is a cherished 
feeling of the heart, there is no possibility of resistance 
when circumstances turn so as to favor sin. How deceit- 
ful then and how false the judgments from a mere 
absence of outward sin ! And these judgments are con- 
tradicted by continual experience, for we are obliged to 
admit that characters full of open faults, and even stained 
by manifest sins, are often more estimable than those in 
which the fault never comes to the surface. Peter, who 
denied his Master and yet really loved Him, would have 
been less worthy of regard, if he had loved less although 
he never had denied. His sin was a revelation of what 
sin is, but not of the comparative worth of his character. 
So too the great crimes of David show that sin in the 
form of strong desire leads to enormous wickedness, even 
to so heinous a crime as murder, while yet in the judg- 
ment of God and of man, many a person would stand far 
below David in character, who had lived an outwardly 
unspotted life. 

And this shows the importance of the disclosures of our 
character which positive acts of sin make to ourselves. We 
live in self-ignorance. Our selfishness or our malevolence 
is so calm, so constant, so quiet, that it makes no impres- 
sion even on ourselves who ought to be conscious of the 
internal temper. By and by there arrives a crisis of 
trial ; a storm of temptation blows down our prudence ; 
selfishness in one form prevails over selfishness in another — 
the stormy wind over the gentle steady breeze. Now we 
discover what we can do, and if we are wise, our weak- 
ness becomes manifest, our pride of character is gone; we 
humble and distrust ourselves, and seek strength from that 
celestial source w T hich is ever open for us. 

2. Sins committed by others may fairly suggest to us what 
we ourselves can do, and so, in a certain sense we may be 
humbled by them, when we apply them as the measuring 
line of the deep possibilities of sin within ourselves. We 



Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 125 

belong to the same race with the most grievous offender 
who has violated social law, and hurt his own soul. We 
have the same propensities. Circumstances, part of which 
he did not create for himself, have caused much, if not all 
of the difference between him and us. We see in him a 
picture of ourselves, drawn indeed in dark colors, but a 
veritable resemblance. Perhaps, viewed by the eyes of 
God, he is even better than you or I. And in the same 
way, all the crimes of our race, as we read of them in the 
history of the past, or hear from time to time of dreadful 
corruptions in the present, ought to be mementos to us of 
what we are capable of doing, of what we have been saved 
from, not by our natural virtue, but by the restraints of a 
merciful God. We ought to have, in this direction as well 
as in others, a sympathy with man. As we admire him in 
the manifestations of his powers, his wisdom, his genius, 
his goodness, so we ought to follow him in his depths of 
ruin, with a fellow-feeling drawn from the consciousness 
of having the same seeds of guilt in us. As we say with 
exultation in the first case " I also am a man," we should 
feel the sympathy of a brother, together with the hum- 
bling sense of a common weakness, in the other case also. 
It was no cant when John Bradford, the English clergy- 
man and martyr under Mary, said, as he saw a man going 
to Tyburn to be hanged for crime, " There, but for the 
grace of God, goes John Bradford." Many a Pharisee, 
if he had heard it, would have said that the man was 
making a hypocritical confession according to the formula 
of a certain school, in which the plan is to make human 
nature as bad as possible, in order that Scriptural grace 
may be exalted. But Bradford died for Christ, whereas 
the Pharisee would doubtless have recanted. And Brad- 
ford was in the right of it. He knew by a proving of 
his own heart, which the Pharisee was a stranger to, how 
desire or feeling leads to sin. He knew by a sympathy 
with the most unworthy, what was hidden from the 



126 Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act 

Pharisee, that men are alike to a greater degree than 
they are different. He did not magnify his sins, and 
liability to great sins, in order to magnify the grace of 
God, but he magnified the grace of God, because he felt 
and found within himself the same sinful nature which 
he saw in the unworthiest. He read himself in the history 
of his fallen and guilty brother. 

And so we see that the Apostle's words, "He that hateth his 
brother is a murderer," are a protest against all Pharisaism, 
all overvaluation of ourselves, all undervaluation of 
others. They cherish pity for the erring, and without 
some such principle as the words involve, we should de- 
spise the faults, rather than compassionate. At the same 
time we condemn the sin. The apostle's words are the 
strongest possible condemnation of hatred. Christ's 
words, already cited, are the strongest possible condemna- 
tion of lust. As soon as we receive them and make them 
the rule of our judgment, we bring ourselves and the open 
offender against morality or the rights of men to the same 
standard. The same hatred which lay unexpressed in us, 
uttered itself by an act of murder in him. Our feeling 
did no obvious harm as his did, but the wrong was the 
same. We stand then on a common level, — he being 
more hardened perhaps by his career of sin than we, — we 
need a common redemption, and if that redemption has 
come to me, it has opened my mind at once to the frightful 
possibilities of crime within my human nature, and the 
glorious possibilities of even divine excellence to which 
divine strength can help me to attain. I do not thank God 
that I am not as other men are, but I own that I am like 
other men, except so far as power above me has lifted me 
above my old self. And the lifting up has consisted, if it 
is real, not in simply keeping me from murder or lust, but 
in helping me to entertain the spirit of love instead of that 
of self and hatred. 

3. Finally, we see what an uncompromising principle 



Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Act. 127 

love is. The apostle John abounds in such incisive re- 
marks as, " He that hateth his brother is a murderer ;" 
"He that loveth not his brother abideth in death;" "He 
that loveth not knoweth not God;" "If a man say, I 
love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar." Some 
seem to think that love is a state of mind in which all 
moral sentiment disappears, the most loving having an 
indiscriminate good-will towards all of every character. 
But a man of such a nature would be a monster whom 
none could respect, without strength of soul, without adap- 
tation for the society of mankind. He has no true love 
who does not feel within him the same aversion from all 
the forms of wickedness which Christ and His apostles 
showed, in their words and in their lives. He has no true 
love, no complacency in goodness, who does not from the 
soul condemn every thing that is evil. There is no be- 
nevolence any where in any moral being, which is not in- 
stinctively opposed to selfishness in all its forms. One 
may say with truth love hates malevolence, hates all that is 
opposed to itself in the feelings or the manifestations of 
the inner life. The conception of it as consisting in a 
weak good nature which is indifferent to character has no 
foundation in the word of God or in the lives of men 
whom we cannot help revering. Love is an element of a 
strong character which views men as they are in all their 
sins, which feels no favor towards the principles by which 
the worldly, the selfish, the proud are governed. And 
thus as it looks on moral evil in all its deformity, it can 
feel intense pity toward the blind in sin, the misguided, 
the fallen, the unworthy, and is ever ready to sacrifice its 
own interests for their good. This is the sign of love that 
it is capable of self-sacrifice. But no true self-sacrifice can 
exist without a sense of the misery of sin. Even the lower 
forms of love hardly deserve to be called by the name, when 
the motive is mere compassion, without a souse of the 
greatest evil in human nature. He who can relieve 



128 Sin measured by the Disposition, not by the Aet. 

misery but is indifferent to the sin he sees around him, 
who only excuses it or makes light of it, he is not, to say 
the least, made perfect in love. The possibility is, that 
he has no true love at all. 

Let us remember then, that the love conceived of by 
the apostle, the love that dwelt in Christ is something 
more than instinctive benevolence, good nature and com- 
passion ; that it is a moral quality of the highest order, 
implying in the soul repugnance to sin, to selfishness, to 
malevolence, to ungodliness ; and that it is prompted, in the 
effort of doing away with sin and of reforming sinners, to 
all compassionate, self-sacrificing efforts. This is the love 
that enlarged the soul of the apostle John, causing him to 
utter his strong language on the evil of hatred ; this is the 
love that made Christ at once hate sin with all intensity, 
and seek to redeem sinners by the highest act of pity and 
self-sacrifice. This is the love of God, who sent His Son 
to be the Saviour of the world, because sin was in His eye 
the greatest of evils. 



SERMON IX. 

THE BLINDNESS OP MEN, AND THE NEAKNESS OF THE 
SPIRITUAL WORLD. 

2 Kings vi. 17. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open, 
his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young 
man, and he saw : and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and 
chariots of fire round about Elisha. 

To the eye of unbelief, and of distrust, this visible, out- 
ward world is everything. Its value is the only assign- 
able value ; its history the only true history ; its dangers the 
only dangers to be shunned ; its help the only help to be 
sought. The- servant of Elisha, until his eye was divinely 
opened, saw nothing but the hosts of the enemy sur- 
rounding Dothan and cutting off escape ; but as soon as 
divine light fell on him, he beheld a new spiritual world. 
There were more on his side than against him, and 
mightier. He lifted up his eye, and behold the mountain 
around the city was full of horses and chariots of fire, sent 
there for the protection of Elisha. He was now the en* 
lightened one, the man of opened eyes ; while the Syrians, 
who gloried in their strength, were smitten with blindness, 
and led captive by a single unarmed man. His mind had 
drawn in a great lesson. The chariots of fire, indeed, and 
horses of fire, were, in one sense, unreal ; that is, they Avere 
not of flesh, nor obvious to human sense : they were un- 
earthly powers, who assumed a form by which they could 
make an impression of truth on the distrustful, fleshly 
mind of the prophet's servant. There wore no chariots 
there, nor horses; but. there were spiritual hosts, who 
showed themselves before the imagination of the young 
6* 129 



130 The Blindness of Men, and the 

man to be more than a match for the army of besiegers 
Thus a great truth from heaven, a reality as lasting and 
as wide as the universe, was taught him, that, beyond our 
eyes and ears, a majestic, spiritual world is moving on in 
silence; that an unseen God has infinite, unseen resources; 
that the causes and issue of things lie outside of the horizon 
of the senses ; that immense agencies may be at work in all 
stillness and without the slightest show, of which the 
worldly mind does not so much as dream. If there are 
hosts of foes of God, there is a God of hosts above them. 
If there is a throne of iniquity, which frameth mischief by 
a law, there is a higher throne of righteousness. " If thou 
seest the oppression of the poor, and violent j>erverting of 
judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the 
matter, for He that is higher than the highest regardeth, 
and there be higher than they." 

Let us take up the vision presented to the young man 
in the text, as a rebuke to distrust, and generally to unbe- 
lief, that worldly state of mind, content with the outside of 
things, from which, in an hour of danger, distrust pro- 
ceeds. The unbelieving man, we are taught, is a superfi- 
cial man, and a blind man. There are things the most 
momentous in the whole world, which he cannot perceive, 
nor apprehend. There is a world around him, in him, 
larger, mightier, more enduring than the earth's rocky 
base, with bearings on life and destiny of untold impor- 
tance, a world which meets him on every hand, follows 
him along while he travels through this world, into the 
noiseless workings of which he is unable to penetrate, the 
existence of which, therefore, enters not into his plans, nor 
affects his desires. Is he not blind in such thick unbelief? 
Or, if he admits into his mind the existence of such a 
world, and is continually falling back into distrust, so that 
goodness seems to him to have no power on its side, is he 
Qot still but a blear-eyed man, whose eye needs to be 



Nearness of the Spiritual World. 131 

opened in order to see the array of spiritual forces that are 
under the command of God? 

1. Let us apply the text first to that particular form of 
unbelief, namely distrust, which is especially referred to. 
The blindness and sinfulness of distrust will be apparent, 
when we take into view the plans and resources of the in- 
visible world. It is a part of the plan that this invisible 
world does not manifest itself by obvious interferences in 
the present order of things: everything which we can 
touch, taste, see or hear, goes on by law and process as 
much as if there were no God. It is another part, that, 
although evil has entered into the system, and although 
there is an everlasting conflict between evil and good, yet 
no act of power is put forth by Him, who must be con- 
ceived to side with goodness and to love it with all his 
heart. Such being the case, while, on the whole, and in 
the end, the right side will conquer, it is often depressed 
and defeated ; its progress is so slow that for days and 
years it seems to stand still. This is true of the cause of 
God in the world, and, to a degree, is true of the same 
cause in the heart of the single person. Thus it will often 
happen, that distrustful hearts will send up a cry like 
that of Elisha's servant in the text, " Alas master ! what 
shall we do?'' The distrustful good man will say with 
the Psalmist, "God has forgotten to be gracious. He 
hath, in anger, shut up His tender mercies." 

Now the blindness of such distrust is made apparent 
from considerations already hinted at and implied in our 
text. 

First, God is ever active, and has an intense sympathy 
with what is good and true. Between this and atheism, 
there is no middle ground, for the distrustful man of this 
day will not fall into the Epicurean's belief, that God is 
indifferent to human things, and indisposed to interfere; or 
into the Manichean belief, that there is an equal contest 
waging between light and darkness. Such being the case, 



132 The Blindness of Men, and the 

we say secondly, that God must have a plan, and that the 
plan may consist partly in leaving the subordinate com- 
batants on the sides of good and evil to themselves, with- 
out divine interference in favor of what God must love. 
It is as if the general of an army, whose troops were raw 
and needed to be inured by long discipline to military 
hardships and military skill, suffered them to undergo 
partial defeats until they were ripe for some great move- 
ments of decisive battle. Must such a general, of neces- 
sity, be hard-hearted, or devoid of love to his country and 
his cause ? So God may suffer the conflicts of this world 
to go on in order to fasten the hearts of His loyal people 
to Himself ; He may let His cause in the world go back- 
ward seemingly ; He may let single souls grapple with 
doubt and temptation, in order at last to bring forward a 
well-trained army of faithful friends, and make ready for 
a decisive triumph. Is there anything absurd in such an 
explanation of God's plan? If it were only a supposition, 
will it not remove difficulties, and is not the distrustful 
man blind not to know that God's plans, which embrace 
boundless ages, may, like the paths of the planets, be ap- 
parently retrograde, while really, they are tending 
towards a glorious consummation ? 

But thirdly, the power of divine help may be nigh and 
ready, if an act of trust be put forth. The chariots and 
horses of fire are near by, but it may be that according to 
God's plan or according to the constitution of the mind, 
they will give no aid, as long as the soul or the church 
loses its confidence. We have put this forward as a possi- 
bility, but it becomes probable, if not certain, when the 
plan of co-operation between the spiritual powers and man 
here below is properly considered. Every thing moves 
forward on a system of partnership, if I may so call it, 
between divine and human agency. If the divine did 
everything, man would be a machine, or an idle, useless 
part of the universe. If man did everything, God would 



Nearness of the Spiritual World. 133 

disappear from His own world, and man could lay claim to 
everything. Such being the case, man must be nerved to 
action, and among the strengthening influences there must 
be trust in his divine partner. How without this can he 
undertake with courage, persevere with hope, or accom- 
plish with humility ? How can the true relation be dis- 
cerned between God and His finite creature, or how can 
the creature keep his right position in the universe, with- 
out trust which recognizes at once his dependence and the 
presence of a helping God? 

2. But we pass on to consider the attitude which unbelief 
takes in regard to spiritual power and presence. There is 
a more radical and deadly form of doubt than distrust. 
Distrust believes and disbelieves at once, or passes to and 
fro in its various moods of courage and apprehension, 
from one state of mind to its opposite, but there is an un- 
belief which is fixed and unbroken by any fits of belief, 
which recognizes no spiritual agency or none affecting the 
conduct. Distrust catches a glimpse now and then of the 
horses and chariots of fire, and again loses the sight, as we 
lose the sight of a star or distant mountain on the horizon ; 
but unbelief sees and hears nothing except the sights and 
sounds of this material world. Let us look for the rest of 
this discourse at this unbelief, at its blindness, at the 
greatness of its blindness. 

I. Here we may notice first that unbelief must in fact 
admit, while it denies, the existence of some kind of spirit- 
ual world. The unbeliever, though he may be a mate- 
rialist and a sensualist, recognizes those immaterial forces 
which we call the human soul. He feels himself to be 
governed by desires or by reason, and to have a power of 
choice between the objects which he regards as being in 
different degrees good. He uses motives to persuade 
others, and cannot help making a wide distinction in his 
own mind between the power which gives direction to the 
body or confines its motion, and the power which moves 



134 The Blindness of Men, and the 

the soul. He admits the existence of invisible social prin- 
ciples, which imply a reference of each individual to a 
community-life ; and the existence of a feeling of justice 
which seems intended to preside over such a society, dis- 
tributing to each of its members what is due to him, and 
binding the whole body together by the feeling of obliga- 
tion expressed in law and penalty. He beholds the 
nations of the world bound together by the same feeling 
of justice, and amid all their crimes and follies appealing 
to the sense of obligation as pervading mankind. Nay 
more, he finds in the lives of men and in history, possibly 
within himself, an indelible sense of sin, a sense of ill-desert 
as old as the world, and with it, going through the whole 
course of history numberless efforts to propitiate some in- 
visible God above the soul, who is felt to be offended by 
evil doing. All this the unbeliever has to recognize, 
however he may account for it all ; and thus his mind 
must have created for itself a world full of life and move- 
ment, connected by many cords with the world of sight, 
but as different from it as possible. This world out of 
sight, moreover, is of exceedingly great importance, he 
finds, to himself. His welfare depends on it. His happi- 
ness is bound up with it. Regrets for remediless evil, a 
sense of injury from others, their contemj>t or malice, has 
more of gall in it than anything he can taste, and the 
pleasures drawn from an invisible world, more of sweet- 
ness. He is thus forced to regard the external world as a 
mere minister to these strange forces which we call soul; 
and yet he is blind, it may be, to the existence of such a 
thing, or if he believes in soul, he lives for sense, as really 
as if soul were nothing. 

II. In this invisible spiritual world, even if we confine 
it to mankind, great and most remarkable events are 
going forward, which the unbelieving man is too blind to 
perc ive, or to which he fails to give their true value. 

He reads the history of the earth's surface, of human 



Nearness of the Spiritual World. 135 

progress, of states in their rise or fall, but he forgets that 
there is another kind of history more internal, governed 
by spiritual ideas, and by influences most mighty although 
invisible. That human character should be tried, formed, 
improved or depraved ; that multitudes of minds with the 
idea of obligation and the sense of sin should be contending 
with sin or should have become its prostrate victims ; that 
a faith in eternal realities and in a divine revelation 
should have become a settled principle in countless 
breasts ; — these certainly, unless it can be proved that the 
soul is to die with the body, are events of deep significance, 
rising in their weight beyond earthquakes or flaring 
comets or victories or revolutions of states. Nay more, 
all the external history of man is modified by these 
spiritual powers, so that to be blind to them is to be blind 
not only to one of the worlds with which our being is con- 
nected, but to history and to life itself. 

Let us look at some of these events or classes of events 
which belong to this spiritual kingdom, in order to esti- 
mate their importance, and the blindness of him who takes 
no account of them. 

We refer first to the life of a man once obscure and un- 
noticed in an obscure nation, who by the force of His life 
and of His character has swayed more souls and done more 
for man's inner life than all other human beings put to- 
gether. What would the external manifestations of man's 
nature, manners, morals, law, art, science, government, be 
at this day apart from Jesus Christ ; and yet His peculiar 
province is the invisible region of the soul. Listen to the 
words in which a noted novelist of Germany, Jean Paul, 
speaks of Him : " Jesus, the purest among the mighty, the 
mightiest among the pure, with His pierced hand Lifted 
kingdoms off their hinges, the stream of centuries out of 
its bed, and still rules the ages on their course. An indi- 
vidual once trod on the earth, who by moral omnipotence 
alone controlled oilier times and founded an eternity of 



136 The Blindness of Men, and the 

•» 

His own ; one, who, soft-blooming and easily drawn as a 
sun-flower, burning and attracting as a sun, still, in His 
mild form, moved and turned Himself and motions and 
centuries together towards the all enlightening primal sun: 
it is that still spirit, which we call Jesus Christ. If He 
existed, either there is a Providence, or He is that Provi- 
dence. Only quiet teaching and quiet dying were the 
notes wherewith this higher Orpheus tamed men-beasts, 
and turned rocks by His music into cities." * 

The power, then, by which this wonderful life of Jesus 
fed itself, was wholly of the spiritual world. He lived 
in communion with the highest conceptions of virtue ; he 
lived in intimacy with the infinite Father, or at least, as 
the unbeliever must admit, with a God who to Him was 
a reality ; He had a deep theory of human nature in the 
ruin of its spiritual capacity, which, joined with His 
deeper love, moved Him to what He regarded as a life for 
man's redemption. And the result of His spiritual life 
and thinking has been the alteration of the world — 
changes which no laws, nor wars, nor arts could have ef- 
fected. 

And by what instruments has He worked so mightily 
on human hearts and characters ? By spiritual ones, by 
the feeling of guilt, the longing for purity and peace of 
soul, by offering pardon and the promises of life-giving 
assistance to the contrite, by a life and example of united 
love and holiness, by unveiling God and the soul's unend- 
ing life. Such are the means by which He has set up His 
throne over mankind, pushing His sway beyond souls 
into every thing which pertains to man. And yet the 
unbeliever sees nothing great or wonderful or spiritual 
in Him ; he accounts for Christ as for some natural phe- 
nomenon, as for a meteoric stone from the skies ; acknow- 
ledging perhaps that he cannot explain Him entirely, but 

* From the Damiucrungcn fiir Deutschland, vol. 33, pp. 6, 16 of his 
works, Berlin, 1S27. 



Nearness of the Spiritual World. 137 

persuaded that He had no connection with a higher 
spi ritual world. 

Passing away from this great, unique fact, let us look at 
classes of spiritual facts to which the uubeliever will give 
no heed, which are of continual occurrence, and which 
may follow one another in the life of one and the same 
human being. 

We begin Avith a condition of a human soul when it is 
grappling with great and strong doubts concerning spirit- 
ual realities, or when the dark shadow of guilt has fallen 
upon it. How it heaves one with sorrow, and arouses all 
our sympathy, to see that soul struggling against billows 
of skepticism, willing to give up all earthly hopes to solve 
the great mysteries of God, sin, redemption, and eternity, 
crying to heaven and to man to help it on its way, crying 
like Ajax to give it light if only to die in. O, what out- 
ward events can compare in importance or interest with 
such passages as this in the life of a soul ! 

Or look at another state of a human soul, which is 
much more common. There is a conflict of long standing 
between desire on the one hand, and the voice of duty 
together with aspirations after an honorable and a perfect 
life on the other. The soul has been often bowed down 
to the dust by defeat ; but so intense is its conviction of 
the necessity of resistance, so real and practical before its 
eyes the great idea of duty, that it will sooner yield up its 
existence than forsake the struggling. The smile or 
frown of the world without is now nothing in its esteem. 
Invisible things are the forces which arouse it to action 
Now, whether it shall rise or fall, is this struggle of no 
importance? Is the supreme worth which is attached to 
character in such a mind undeserving of notice ? Say 
you who arc worldly and unspiritual, when you estimate 
the power of mind thrown into the struggle, or I ho pos- 
sible results in the direction of hope or despair, is any 



138 The Blindness of Men, and the 

contest of material forces, however vast, of weight enough 
to be placed by its side ? 

But there is another and a more advanced class of 
spiritual facts. Great multitudes think that they have 
got beyond the first and hardest encounters of such a con- 
flict; and have made headway principally, because the 
great thoughts of a holy God and of a redemption from 
sin somehow threw strength into their souls, and helped 
them to rise out of the atmosphere of spiritual death. 
Henceforth they are engaged in leading a life of virtue, 
of intercourse with a divine and spiritual helper, of faith 
in an endless life. Their aim is to fit their characters for 
such endless life by becoming on earth as much like God 
as possible. And as they proceed on their way, imper- 
fectly indeed, but as successfully as is the lot of human 
strivings, hope of spiritual good in prospect cheers them, 
the favor of an invisible God brightens their path, all 
unseen things become more real and all seen things more 
unsubstantial. There is, thus, a spiritual life led by great 
numbers of men on earth, a life of resistance to sin, a life 
of love, a life of faith in those divine things, which, 
whether they can be proved true or not, form the most 
noble characters. 

But as we watch these persons longer, and behold them 
at the termination of their earthly lives, we meet with 
another group of spiritual facts, which are of almost 
hourly occurrence These persons, as they leave this 
world, rather grow than wane in the conviction that what 
has had the chief power over their lives has been a pro- 
found reality. Hope instead of expiring at death grows 
brighter. Sin, instead of seeming a small thing to be 
watched and striven against, seems darker and more ter- 
rible. God now is ineffably true, redemption ineffably 
valuable. They die, giving every proof that these 
spiritual ideas are enstamped on their souls, have moulded 






Nearness of the Spiritual World. 139 

their characters, and have fitted them for a spiritual, holy 
world, if there be any such place. 

Facts such as these are occurring in countless in- 
stances, while the unbeliever is reading his newspaper, 
driving his trade, enjoying life like an animal, with no 
inquiry whether there be a spiritual world, and with no 
interest in the success or disappointment of this nobler 
class of minds. Oh ! are there not among mankind two 
different kinds of worlds? While some are acting as if 
right and wrong, life and soul and God are dread realities, 
others cleave to the dust like the serpent's brood ; while 
some devote their lives to the attainment of virtue, the 
improvement of character, the preparation for death, 
others eat, drink, live, think, wish, as if the earth enclosed 
and satisfied man. " Some, to their everlasting home this 
solemn moment fly," on wings of hope, while others have 
no more than a brute's concern about death, and a tran- 
sient dread of some possibility beyond it. What a con- 
trast, if the vast throng of spiritual ones could be mus- 
tered over against the vaster throng of unbelievers. 
What a difference of character and of main purpose, 
what a difference of thoughts reigning in the intellect and 
over the heart. Could two worlds of material substance, 
made by the hand of God, differ so widely ? If the un- 
believers are enlightened, the others are benighted ; if the 
world of spiritual minds are in the light, the other world 
is blind and in darkness, " and in love with darkness." 

III. These events of the spiritual world among man- 
kind depend on the existence and presence of a spiritual 
world above mankind. This is indeed obvious, and has 
come into view as we looked at the life of Christ and of 
those who followed Him in a spiritual life. If the un- 
believer is on true, safe ground, there is nothing that ought 
to rule the life except the material earth and its laws, the 
desires, chiefly the animal ones, and some few of the 
social principles. If the spiritual man is right, there is 



140 The Blindness of 3Ien, and the 

a higher world, beyond the laws of matter, desire, and 
society. The exercise of his reason, conscience, and affec- 
tions has introduced him among a different set of realities 
which themselves involve the existence of real personali- 
ties above man. He now acknowledges the, laws of a 
moral universe — laws made to regulate thought, and 
therefore emanating from a being who has planned and 
thought. Sin itself, felt in his conscience, conducts down 
upon him the justice of the universe. When once God 
is admitted to be a reality, there is a systom centering at 
His throne ; let him for a moment, in thought, conceive 
of God as not existing, and the spiritual world among men 
becomes darkly and inexplicably incomplete. Whether 
the process is logical or not, he finds he must deny moral 
and spiritual realities among men, or carry them upward 
until they fill the universe. Thus he cannot stop short of 
a personal God, of a world of real beings of which He 
is the centre, or he must give up everything. And so, 
from the opposite quarter, the unbeliever must strand on 
atheism. 

IV. If, now, there is such a world with God for its 
centre, it is the height of blindness not to see it. This is 
obvious from a great variety of considerations. If there is 
such a world, it must be of infinite importance compared 
with the world of matter ; the interests of the soul are 
bound up with it, and to live as if they depended upon the 
earth must be self-ruin. If God exists, His existence 
must, in various ways, be of boundless moment to the 
soul, and especially must the thought of God, and faith in 
Him, be of the greatest weight in moving and directing the 
character. The life passed under the power of spiritual 
realities is as different from a life according to the course 
of this world, as Heaven is from hell. If sin is a fact, it 
is a very weighty, a very dreadful fact. If there be such 
a thing as recovery from sin possible, it is the pearl of 
great price. And if all this be so, and the unbeliever 



Nearness of the Spiritual World. 141 

shuts his eye to it, how great must be his blindness, how 
deserving is his state of being called a state of spiritual 
darkness and death ! 

V. Such blindness needs to be overcome by a divine 
act of opening the eyes. Men may well pray "Lord, 
open his eyes that he may see." And the unbeliever him- 
self, if a glimmering of light falls on him, may well pray 
for help from the God of light. If there is such an entire 
contrast between the worlds of which we have spoken, it 
must needs be that old habits of thought, strengthened 
through an unspiritual life, must render spiritual appre- 
hension exceedingly difficult; that the intense reality 
which has gathered around worldly objects must make 
objects of faith seem spectral and misty ; that inordinate 
desire, gravitating toward the ground, must make all 
upward movement of the soul next to impossible ; that 
speculative difficulties must block up the path, if the soul 
should try to break away from the prison of sensual things ; 
that the dawn of faith must be overhung with clouds 
of distrust ; that the soul must feel itself without strength 
to use faculties which have been so long asleep. How 
can belief grow up in a mind full of skepticism, in a soul 
almost without the power to trust? Can argument pro- 
duce belief in spiritual realities? But where the power 
of appreciating moral truth is nearly gone, where con- 
science is blunt, and the affections almost extinct, argu- 
ment can have no force, for it runs back to convictions 
which arc either dead, or too weak to arouse to action. 
If the unbeliever had never had his attention called to 
spiritual things, his slumbering powers that have a sym- 
pathy with the invisible might possibly be awakened ; 
but now, long use, long love of the earth, has enfeebled 
and deadened him. He cannot catch hold of divine 
realities and lift himself upward. The hardest step is 
the first, and this costs almost superhuman effort. 

Is his case then hopeless? No, not hopeless, if you 



142 The Blindness of Men. 

take into account the resources of the invisible world, 
but only hopeless, if you look at this world of outward 
things, at his present strength, at the character which a 
life of unbelief and worldliness has formed. "Weak as 
he is, the spiritual world is as near him and as powerful 
as ever, possessed of means to awaken and enlighten him. 
The most interesting of thoughts in his case is that these 
superior powers are at work on man, as is shown by the 
throng who have come out of sin, have seen the light of 
God, and received a spiritual life. All praise be to the en- 
lightening Spirit which has opened so many blind eyes — 
he too may see. The chariots and horses of fire may 
present themselves to him also. Under the influences of 
the new spiritual sight, he may become a new man, and 
the covel things of the invisible world may fill him with 
joy. 



SERMON X. 
union: of justice and grace in god. 

Exodus xxxiv. 7. Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and 
that will by no means clear the guilty. 

Romans hi. 26. That he might be just, and the justifier of him which 
believeth in Jesus. 

There is an agreement in the spirit of these two most 
important passages of scripture. The one proclaims the 
union in the character of God of forgiveness and holiness. 
The other declares that when God, in His plan of salvation 
through Christ, treats sinners as if they had never 
offended, He is at the same time just. He was not willing 
to exercise His highest act of forgiveness, without at the 
same time and in the same transaction showing that He has 
as sincere and strong an aversion to sin, as if He had not 
cleared the guilty but allowed the law to take its course. 

It is not my purpose at this time to treat theologically 
of this union of qualities that may be called opposites in 
the divine government, nor chiefly to seek to show how 
they were manifested in Christ's work and passion ; but my 
object is to show how the human race is prepared for such 
a twofold exhibition of the divine character, and how the 
exhibition trains men tip in those excellencies of character 
which would be defects if they existed apart. " Behold 
the goodness and severity of God," says the Apostle Paul. 
In most cases the goodness is illustrated by one kind of 
events and the severity by another, but in Christ's work the 
same event of His death displayed the two sides of God's 
character alike and at once, mid thus pardon was never 
offered to the guilty without a loud protest against sin. 
Now the pains taken to ineuleate both these qualities 

143 



144 Union of Justice and Grace in God. 

through the entire scriptures seem to point at something 
in man, some concepbioi^ of character which he needs to have 
impressed upon him and which he ought to realize in his 
own life. We may go farther and say that this two-sided 
view of God meets man's conceptions already awakened by 
the actings of his own nature, and thus strikes a chord in 
man which is in harmony with the scriptures and espe- 
cially with the gospel. 

I. And in pursuing this subject we remark first that 
among men he who is capable of exercising only hard, un- 
relenting justice is held to be far from perfection, and can- 
not be loved ; while on the other hand a character in which 
bare kindness or goodness is the only noticeable trait 
secures no respect. Only where we see the two qualities 
united can we feel decided confidence and attachment. 

Let us look first at several manifestations of bare justice 
in character or temper, and then at mere kindness or 
goodness, in order to see whether this be not so. 

First we notice sternness, which is the attribute of one 
who has a strict rule of duty or of propriety in his mind, 
and measures the conduct of men by inflexible rules of 
right He condemns and approves for good cause. He 
has no favorites and pays no respect to persons, but ap- 
proves or condemns by the same severe rule all alike, 
whether friends or foes. He notices all departures from 
the standards : a little one does not escape his penetrating 
eye ; a great one meets with its proportionate censure. In 
short, morals and manners are estimated by him with im- 
partiality, and deviations from the right rule are blamed 
as strictly as if he had no other feeling but that of justice, 
and were not a man. "When this character runs into ex- 
cess, so that a man rates defects at more than their 
just weight, we call him harsh or severe, and when he 
takes pleasure in discovering defects we call him censori* 
ous, and these characters we dislike by an instinct of 
nature. But let the man be simply stern — is he loved for 



Union of Justice and Grace in God. 145 

this quality? Certainly not, if the trait throws others 
which are fitted to give relief to it into the shade. And 
this dislike, assuredly, is owing, not to the unwillingness 
of fallen men to be narrowly scanned, but to the distorted 
picture of human nature which is presented by a character, 
in which simple justice predominates in the temper and 
the life. 

Again, we will call up before us the quality of indigna- 
tion, and conceive all the manifestations of the life within 
to run in that channel. Indignation is the expression, 
especially the sudden expression, of displeasure at what 
is regarded as unworthy of a man. Like sternness, it 
implies the recognition of a standard supposed to be 
righteous, united to a strict judgment according to the stan- 
dard and to displeasure at short-comings. Indignation is a 
virtue of character, and no character can be perfect if it 
be absent. It is a sense of justice carried into the soul 
and kindling it up into anger. It is the resistance of 
human sensibility against wrong doing. In indignation 
there is properly no selfish element, any more than in 
justice, of which indignation is the hand-maid. We may 
add that indignation serves the sympathies of our nature ; 
it takes under the protection of its just wrath public 
wrongs, wrongs done to the defenceless and the humble. 
It is a generous emotion, for it breathes defiance to arbi- 
trary power, to whatever exalts itself against humanity ; 
it draws its sword against tyrannical public sentiment ; it 
shelters the rights of the minority and the despised under 
its wing. Thus there is no noble soul in which this is not 
found a guest. But suppose now that indignation gives 
the key note to character ; suppose that a man, like a 
mastiff at the door of righteousness, is forever growling 
at injustice; that his eye is sharp to see wrong which 
ordinary senses cannot discover ; and suppose also in its 
favor, that its strength is duly proportioned to the 
strength of the wrong perceived, so that it is neither ex- 
7 



146 Union of Justice and Grace in God. 

cited on the wrong occasion nor runs over the line of 
justice; — even then, we ask, will such a man beloved? 
Certainly not. He will be respected for his fidelity to 
justice, but loved he cannot be. Ko one likes to take a 
storm home to his bosom, or feels gladness when the light- 
ning is playing before his eyes. The reformer, whose soul 
is continually on fire with just wrath against social or 
political sins, is perhaps the most useful man in a com- 
munity, and yet he is apt to have but few instalments of 
love paid to him. Even the quiet and the loving among 
his advocates like to stand a little way beyond the hear- 
ing of his denunciations. And yet he is the truest servant 
of justice. 

I mention but one more of those traits of character 
which partake of the quality of justice — it is dutifulness. 
What is more praised and honored in the world than this 
quality, which in its lower forms of legality constitutes the 
honest citizen, and in its higher the man of unshaken 
fidelity to conscience and to God? Moreover, dutifulness, 
in its wider sense, embraces the feelings and affections 
which are due to those who are near to us, so that it 
occupies a field from which love is not shut out. But 
look at it as consisting in the mere discharge of obligations, 
as the naked inclination of the soul to do what is com- 
manded by lawful authority, and you will see that it 
excites no love, draws no sympathy towards itself, is no 
bond of union between minds. And it is so with the law- 
giver as with the subject: maintenance of law, like 
loyalty to law, is a quality possessed of little attractiveness, 
essential as it is to the stability and welfare whether of a 
state or of the universe. 

But I pass over to the other side of the subject and 
remark, that a character in which hare kindness or goodness 
throws all other qualities into the shade secures no respect. 
And here we speak of true kindliness of nature, not of that 
semblance of it, which does kind acts on calculation, in 



Union of Justice and Gh*ace in God. 147 

order to get back the like from others. It is felt, when 
we observe a character where this ground color in its 
various shades is discernible, that it has some essential 
deficiency, that it is incapable of meeting any of the crises 
in any of the kinds of society which God has ordained, 
that it is unmanly and unheroic, if not often deserving 
of contempt. Illustrations offer themselves on every 
hand, from which we can pick out but one or two. The 
first which we notice is indiscriminate alms-giving. When 
the tendency to relieve distress appears in the character 
as an uncontrolled instinct; when a man scatters his 
money or good deeds without inquiring into the claims of 
the petitioners, who need only ask to come away full- 
handed ; who pronounces such an unreasoning freeness of 
beneficence worthy of honor from mankind ? Is it not 
rather felt to be an amiable weakness, an evil in the shape 
of good? Such a man may have a certain kind of love 
bestowed on him ; he may be popular ; he certainly will 
be popular in a community of beggars, though even they, 
doubtless, will discover his want of moral strength. 

Another form of the same one-sidedness is seen in 
reluctance to reprove others. Many amiable persons can 
never rebuke for their faults those even whom they sin- 
cerely love, from an unwillingness to wound their feelings. 
To their minds reproof is a kind of judicial act, which 
ought to come from a superior sitting in a trial of con- 
duct ; they cannot nerve themselves to the discharge of 
such an office, much as they desire to see the fault cor- 
rected. Now, is it not evident, that when one intimate 
friend acts toward another on this principle, much of the 
respect which would otherwise grow up, and without 
which love itself cannot be deep, must fail to exist? 
May not even the stern, when the sting of reproof has 
passed away, and the benefit remains, occupy a higher 
place of regard. 

So too, to give but one more illustration, the indulgent 



148 Union of Justice and Grace in God. 

person, when that quality is excessive, not only does a 
vast amount of evil, but is unable to take a high place in 
other hearts. Indiscriminate or unreasoniug indulgence 
fails in the end to secure the love which it obtains at 
first, and comes to be despised. The child is delighted 
with it, but taxes it more and more until compliance is 
outrun, and then complains; the grown-up, reflecting 
person feels that by it his interests were sacrificed. 

And if we look into several of the principal employ- 
ments of life we shall see that a tendency to either 
extreme, of gentleness or of severity, is most hurtful to 
society. In family government the lax discipline of the 
father hurts the child, and the father's sternness ruins him. 
The teacher by over indulgence fosters idleness in the pupil, 
while by harshness he makes him hate study and rouses 
rebellion. The military officer by slack discipline corrupts 
and enervates an army, as well as makes it a pest to the 
region where it is quartered, and by cruel rigor destroys 
that pride in the service, and that attachment to the 
leader, without which an army cannot fight well. The 
magistrate who out of pity pardons every convict is a foe 
to the state's true interest ; he who drives law to the extreme, 
causes law itself to lose its power. The judge must lean 
towards equity, or the strict letter of the statute will be an 
injury to society; a Draco whose laws are written in 
blood will arouse, by and by, such a feeling that the laws 
will not be enforced. In short through all the forms of 
life, when authority is given to some over others, the ex- 
istence of either of these qualities without the other 
destroys all sound moral government. 

On the contrary, where both qualities are found in 
due measure, they insure the best government which 
the circumstances allow. They do not check each other, 
as might be supposed, but add to each other's power. 
The indiscriminately kind man is felt to be weak ; the 
harsh, rigorous nature may have intellect in abundance, 



Union of Justice and Grace in God. 149 

but fails to warm the souls of men. When united they 
form character, a character in which there is depth, the 
depth of intellect resting below temper and impulse on a 
foundation of wisdom and true excellence of Iieart. There 
can be no moral government among men without wisdom, 
for he who makes men good must look not at immediate 
impressions but at results : he must take long stretches of 
time into view, and long series and interactions of causes 
shaping character. When did instinctive benevolence 
ever fail to thwart its own wishes and to corrupt its bene- 
ficiaries ? 

The union of these opposites, where alone wisdom can 
be found, ensures the best government, and as every one 
must be in some way a governor, of a family, or a work- 
shop, if not of a town or state, the whole of the vast 
interests of mankind depend on this union. 

II. If God is to be honored and loved by human beings 
He must present himself to our minds under the same two- 
fold aspect. He must be seen in the light of those quali- 
ties which we may call by the name of justice, and of 
those to which we give the names of goodness, kindness, 
tenderness or mercy. 

What would be the kind of manifestations of the 
divine character suited to the nature of unfallen human 
beings, it is, perhaps, not very important to inquire. But 
we see no reason to suppose that they would differ from 
the exhibitions of God given fully in the Scriptures, and 
less clearly in life and history, to man in his state of sin, 
except that the peculiar trait of mercy would not then be 
called forth. Human character as such, whether inno- 
cent or fallen, is made for moral government, for obedi- 
ence to the law of a superior, and for the acknowledgment 
of the rights of equals, as well as for the reciprocation of 
benevolence ; so that display of divine justice or righteous* 
ness and of divine goodness or kindness would be needed 
for the edu cation of the race as much then as in our 



150 Union of Justice and Grace in Gad. 

present fallen condition. It can hardly be supposed that 
the sense of justice would fade out of the minds of men 
in a perfectly pure society, or that righteousness and the 
consciousness of obligation would then find no place in 
the intercourse of men. There must be law so long as 
there are finite beings; only law would play a very 
subordinate part in a pure world. But, however this may 
be, sin, by the law of our moral nature, brings with it the 
sense of the displeasure of God, a sense which the heathen 
cannot destroy, even when they form gods to themselves 
with human passions and a human standard of morals. 
And thus in a state of sin divine justice, divine wrath, 
divine punishment must occupy such a foremost place 
that all eyes can see it. Now these principles of human 
nature have strong appeals made to them by feelings 
which lay dormant in a state of innocence, — fear of retribu- 
tion, a feeling that our interests are separate from those 
of God and His universe, remorse for sin, the desire to 
hide our guilt from our own eyes and to keep out of sight 
of God as much as possible. These are either the wounds 
made by the sword of justice, or the human methods to 
cure those wounds without looking our condition and our 
character in the face. 

Suppose now the revelations of God to man, all of 
them, to take this one form of severe justice or indigna- 
tion against sin, of stern authority -or vindication of in- 
jured law. Man, we will suppose,, remains as he was, 
and nature contains all the sources of enjoyment which it 
had before he fell, but the heavens of God are covered 
with a black cloud, out of which issue lightnings and 
thunderings upon human souls. Sinai itself will now re- 
tain only the latter part of that matchless verse from 
which we take our text. We hear no longer of "the 
Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering 
and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for 
thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin ;" but 



Union of Justice and Grace in God. 151 

the words which follow — that " God will by no means clear 
the guilty/' that He " visits the iniquity of the fathers upon 
the children unto the third and to the fourth generations " 
— these words are re-echoed and rebound continually from 
the angry skies. Now what is the influence of all this 
disclosure of unmingled justice upon temper and charac- 
ter ? Is there any education in it towards a life of love 
and of trust, towards a life of virtue growing out of these 
sister affections ? Remorse may be aroused by it. Is not 
remorse a paralysis of the soul, making it more helpless 
than before, unnerving resolution and killing hope ? Or 
pleasure may be sought as a relief from the burden of 
gloomy care. Does that bring men to God, or is not its 
very aim to forget Him ? Or the soul may swerve from 
just conceptions of its relations to God ; it may abrogate 
for itself, so to speak, His law of righteousness and con- 
struct a laxer code. Is such error any fit education for 
the race in righteousness and goodness? And if man 
should compare this unmitigated justice of God with the 
gentleness of human law, which allows pardons and respites, 
would not the awful sternness of the divine character be 
made so much the gloomier by the contrast? Or if, what 
we must regard as the truer supposition, such manifesta- 
tions of God were to make their impress upon human 
law, would that not become a law of inexorable cruelty 
and of bloody revenge, and would not law — if law there 
could be — deepen the traits in man's nature that are most 
fell and deadly, while the tender ones would find little 
room to expand ? Let those savage tribes, whose charac- 
ters are formed by and assimilated to the malignant beings 
they worship, answer. 

On the other hand let us think for a moment what kind 
of a moral training the human race would have under the 
one-sided exhibition of the divine goodness. And here sup- 
pose first, as we have done before, the race to be uiworrupt, 
and that there is no positive need, in order to aid restora- 



i52 Union of Justice and Grace in God. 

tion to virtue, that a disclosure should be made of forgive- 
ness. In this state of things would not man — knowing 
nothing of divine justice — remain a weakling in rectitude, 
unable to dare or resist? Could he have any strong 
points of character about him ? Could he be a minister 
and interpreter of God in any high sense outside of the 
natural world, and would not the higher world of morals 
be to him an unexplored, unknown kingdom ? We con- 
ceive of the angelic hosts as siding with God, when they 
see the majesty of His righteousness even in the punish- 
ment of sin. And in the Apocalypse Heaven is full of 
the cry, " Even so Lord God Almighty, for just and true 
are thy judgments." They have been educated— perhaps 
by the spectacle of sin in the universe — into indignation 
against sin, but the race of man in the case supposed would 
be little more than higher animals, undeveloped in those 
moral faculties which behold God in His entire character. 
But let us turn to the existing state of things in a race 
of sinners. Let this race, which has swerved from right- 
eousness, be educated under impressions of divine goodness 
and kindness, only excepting from these manifestations of 
God a revelation of forgiveness, for forgiveness implies ante- 
cedent justice which in the case supposed is set aside. Let 
then all that looks like forgiveness take the form of clem- 
ency or rather of indulgence. " You are conscious of sin," 
the divine government will say to mankind, "but you 
need not trouble yourselves about sin ; God overlooks it ; 
He has no censure or penalty or prison for it that you 
know of. So you may take your way through life with 
the less burden, because you can shake off the thought of 
divine wrath and retribution." But is this the true means 
of maintaining the rights of God, or of educating man for 
a life of virtue ? Nay, rather, is not such an exhibition 
of God's feelings towards sin calculated to destroy all 
respeat for His character, even in the very persons who 
may be supposed to draw benefit from His indulgence? 



Union of Justice and Grace in God. 153 

For how could a policy which would ruin a family and 
dissolve a state, which would make children and citizens 
feel that their interests had been neglected, — when ema- 
nating from a higher throne — be any safer or wiser ? We 
can see also, that God, so manifested, could secure as 
little affection as respect ; for the good could not put their 
trust in Him, the bad would be won from their sins by no 
evidence of love on His part; all would feel that the most 
essential character of a ruler was wanting. And the 
influence on civil order would be most disastrous ; either 
human government copying after the divine, would 
abolish its punishments, open its houses of correction and 
let every one do as he chose, or would make a vain 
attempt to maintain righteousness and order, when the 
whole current of religion ran against it. We cannot con- 
ceive of a greater disaster than such a divine adminis- 
tration, the very belief in which, if it had no reality, 
would unsettle everything man holds dear. 

But when both sides of God's character and government 
are revealed together, every point is gained. God can be 
revered and felt to be worthy of reverence, can be loved 
and be felt to be worthy of love. The righteous can feel 
safe under His shelter, and the wicked can dread His dis- 
pleasure. The trembling sinner can look with hope 
toward the light which beams from His mingled justice 
and holiness. Man, in all the forms of society, can feel 
that God's known character and will is the cement which 
binds the family, the State, the natio7is of mankind to- 
gether by a twisted cord of justice and good-will. Man 
can now be educated for the offices of the world and for 
eternal life, for all time and all places on one plan, 
because the policy of the family and of the State is seen 
to be the policy of Heaven and of the universe. Law 
reigns and pardon is offered to sinners without weakening 
the authority or venerableness of the law-giver. kl There 

is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest bo feared." Sin- 

7* 



154 Union of Justice and Grace in God. 

ners are recovered and reclaimed first by a sense of sin, 
and then by a perception of divine love, and without the 
latter they would not think of their sins, or grow into 
that filial fear, that holy worship which the Psalmist in- 
tends. Only under this two-fold aspect of God is true 
religion, the religion of the soul, possible. 

III. We add thirdly, that it involves a very high degree 
of wisdom to know when to be just or severe, and when 
to exercise goodness or grace. The mere impulse of 
benevolence would, as we have seen, destroy every govern- 
ment from the lowest to the highest, from the government 
of a family to the government of the universe. Nor can 
a strong sense of the evils of sin determine whether sin 
ought, in any particular case, to be dealt with in the way 
of forbearance or of punishment, of grace or of wrath. 
The mere attribute of justice would not be a safe guide 
for any administration, divine or human ; only it is safer 
than the mere impulse of benevolence, for its object is to 
maintain law and right. But the presence of neither 
quality in the soul is any guide of conduct. If a magis- 
trate, invested with the pardoning power, pardons because 
he hates to see suffering, why should he not, with as good 
reason, punish because he hates to see crime f And so the 
attribute of justice in God renders it at least as certain 
that He will punish, as His goodness, that He will save. 
What is there then that shall decide under any govern- 
ment, divine or human, whether law shall have its perfect 
course or shall be interrupted? Nay, more, if the law be 
good, must there not be a reason for its interruption, a 
reason lying beyond the pity of the law-giver and the suffer- 
ings of transgressors f 

We come then to this result, that only wide-looking and 
far-looking wisdom can decide in the case of a particular 
offender whether such interruption of law by pardon is 
possible, without hazarding the permanent good of the 
society in question. Feeling cannot decide, mere expert- 



Union oj Justice and Grace in God. 155 

ence cannot decide ; only a wisdom confirmed by experi- 
ence, acquainted with the play of motives, capable of 
judging how the moral education of society will be affected 
by different ways of administering law, only this high 
gift, granted in scanty measure to the best minds, is fully 
equal to a problem of setting law aside and yet maintain- 
ing its force. 

How much more then, would it be a problem beyond 
man's power to solve whether God could pardon sin, if He 
had not disclosed Himself in His feelings and His mea- 
sures? For in the case of human law, equity often de- 
mands exceptions, and pettier offences are beneath notice, 
and the sentiments of the subjects of law concerning the 
law are to be taken into account. But there, in the uni- 
versal law before the mind of God there is no divergence 
between strict justice and equity ; a little sin, if there be 
such a thing, is caught by the net of omniscient righteous- 
ness as surely as a great one; and the unerring truth of 
God is to govern, not to be governed by, the sentiment of 
the worlds. What man then, who but a peer of God, can 
rise to so high a seat of wisdom as to decide whether or 
not He can pardon sin? I marvel, when I hear men who 
could not decide a case aright in court, who in a chair of 
state might do vast mischief by unwise pardons, nay, who 
spoil their own children, perhaps, by indulgence or by 
harshness, I marvel, when I hear these men legislating 
for the universe, as if they were " gods and all of them 
children of the most High." I marvel, when I hear their 
theories on sin and on retribution, as if defection from the 
Maker and Father of the universe were a little thing, all 
the dimensions of which they could ascertain by their 
square and compass. What ? Have not men been legisla- 
ting for centuries and yet with all the lights of transmitted 
experience unable to reach the golden mean between 
severity and laxity, complaining of their fathers only io 
be found fault with themselves by the next age, disputing 



156 Union of Justice and Grace in God. 

until now on the very principles of criminal lav/, and shall 
such a race that cannot govern itself sit in judgment on 
God? He who can comprehend the universe, and can 
fathom character and the bearings of His dealings on 
character, He and He alone can tell when to be for- 
bearing and when to smite, when to forgive and how long 
to hold out offers of forgiveness, how to mingle and 
to proportion holiness with love in His dealings with 
sinners. 

It is a great problem to govern a nation ; it is a greater 
to govern a virtuous universe ; but a greater still is pre- 
sented when the element of evil is thrown into the question, 
and the interests of the many come into conflict with the 
happiness of the sinful few. Especially when we look on 
God as training His creatures up for a higher condition ; 
enlarging their powers, helping the strong to grow 
stronger, pitying the weak and revealing Himself as their 
forgiving God ; then above all does it appear that the 
balances of the moral universe are exceedingly delicate, 
and that there is need of a hand, firm and wise beyond 
our thought, to hold them. 

No solution of the intricacies of things has been offered 
to man deserving of notice but that which Christ has 
made. The reconciliation of holiness and love in His 
work, its just, well-balanced training of the whole moral 
nature challenge our respect, our admiration, even if we 
will stand aloof from Christ. He is made of God unto us 
wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemp- 
tion. 

The training of our race depends more on the moral im- 
pressions that are made upon it than on anything else, 
and these moral impressions depend mainly on the recog- 
nized character of God. TVith a certain character of God, 
law and society, family life and state life, would have no 
foundation to rest upon, no defence of their integrity and 
their sacredness : with a certain other conception of God, 



Union of Justice and Grace in God. 157 

severity, wrath, ferocity, all the harsher qualities would be 
cultivated, religion would wear a malign countenance, law 
would be a minister of death. How vastly important then 
is the religious conviction concerning God for the welfare 
of mankind. And may we not go farther and say that 
other worlds besides ours, that principalities and powers in 
heavenly places need a similar training ? Is there any- 
thing strange in the hints thrown out by our sacred 
writers, that the scheme of God, as it culminates in Christ, 
should be used for the ennoblement and perfection of the 
heavenly host ? I do not mean that sin is necessary to 
manifest God more fully and clearly to the higher intelli- 
gences, but that when once it exists, an incidental but a 
great good is drawn from it for those who have never 
offended. Conceive of them as spectators of the fall and 
the first measures of God for the restoration of man. 
Something yet remains in this world-history to satisfy 
their minds for which they wait in faith. At length the 
full solution comes in Christ incarnate and suffering; 
now they burst into rapturous joy and learn new wisdom, 
and become more faithful to righteousness, as they see the 
mystery of grace unfolded ; now " unto the principalities 
and powers in heavenly places " is " made known by the 
church the manifold wisdom of God." 

And now, having brought your minds to Christ, I close 
with the remark that He united the two sides of character 
which we have spoken of, in their due mixture, in His one 
person. There has been one man who has shown a perfect 
balance of character in this respect, and He is fitted for 
this reason to represent God and to be a moral legislator 
for mankind. This is remarkable in regard to our Lord, 
that a person who should have become acquainted only 
with His traits of love, as forbearance, condescension, 
patience, mildness, pity, and forgiveness, would be apt to 
suppose that he had seen the whole framework of Tlis char- 
acter ; while another person who heard His awful rebukes 



158 Union of Justice and Grace in God. 

of the Pharisees, and saw with what zeal He defended the 
rights of God, and observed what He thought of sin and 
what were his threatenings against it, would take Him for 
a man made out of iron justice alone. But He united in 
unrivalled harmony both these aspects of character. And 
it is well worthy of being remarked that their union 
proves their genuineness and their depth. He who could 
love so and forgive so, notwithstanding His deep sense of 
the sin, what strength of character must He have had, 
what a depth and truth of love, what a power of loving, 
what an inexhaustible richness of soul ! And He who could 
rebuke so and show such strong displeasure against evil 
doing, how hard, humanly speaking, must it have been for 
Him to love objects so far from loveliness ; and if He loved 
them as He did, must not His love have been of another 
kind than ours, one superior to personal slights and in- 
juries, wholly unlike instinctive kindness of temper, par- 
taking of a quality of lofty wisdom ! You would think that 
each of these traits would check and neutralize the other, 
that the holy hater of sin could not bend into love, that 
the man * compact ' of love must be blind to justice, but it 
was not so. The strength of His holiness and justice 
proves the depth of His love, and His love was the stronger, 
because it rested on the fixed rock of justice and holiness. 
This union of qualities, which, as in the case of the 
Saviour, leads not to a dead-lock of character, but to active 
living perfection, is allied to wisdom or rather is itself wis- 
dom, for it implies moral judgment perfectly sound and 
rectitude unshaken. Christ then, with such a nature, 
would be the loving Saviour, the friend of sinners, but he 
would be also the wise law-giver and the just Judge. He 
is thus like God and fitted to represent God ; he embodies 
that idea of God, which, with the help of the noblest passages 
of the Old Testament, our minds, in their best frames of 
thought and feeling, are able to form. And if, in a 
larger sphere, the Son of Man shall judge the world He 



Union of Justice and Grace in God. 159 

came to save, it will be not in a new character, but only in 
a new office. 

Worthy His hand to hold the keys, 

Guided by wisdom and by love ; 
Worthy to -rule o'er mortal life, 

O'er worids below and worlds above. 



SERMON XI. 

EARTHLY THINGS MUST BE BELIEVED BEFORE 
HEAVENLY CAN BE. 

John iii. 13. If I have told you earthly things and ye believed not, 
how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things ? 

These words contain an argument from the less to the 
greater. If you disbelieve what I say in cases where 
human experience and consciousness give their voice in 
favor of my testimony, how much more will you dis- 
believe, when I declare to you that which is far beyond 
the reach of human knowledge? And if the elementary 
knowledge within your attainment is rejected or denied, 
how can you receive that superior or divine knowledge, 
which has no force nor meaning for the mind, unless it is 
brought into connection with these very earthly elements? 

I purpose to illustrate and unfold the words of our 
Lord, first, by attempting to find out what the earthly and 
what the heavenly things are of which He speaks, and 
secondly, by showing how unbelief in the heavenly things 
is necessarily involved in rejection of the earthly. 

I. First, then, the earthly things are those which it did 
not require a teacher from Heaven to make known. A 
large portion of the truth which affects the interests of 
our spiritual and immortal nature is of this sort. Such 
truth is generally admitted in civilized communities with 
more or less distinctness, because it reposes on primary 
moral convictions which are common to all men. Even 
through Pagan and barbarous lands, it is involved in the 
feelings and confessions of all the people. The office of 
a religious teacher or of an inspired prophet is not to dis* 
160 



Earthly things must be believed before Heavenly can be. 161 

close these earthly things, as if they were the matter of a 
new revelation, but he takes them for granted, or else he 
reaffirms them because the minds of men, for some 
reason, discover them dimly and blindly. It may be, 
indeed, of the greatest importance that he should reaffirm 
them, for he needs to carry the minds of men with him 
when he advances to the higher and heavenly things, 
and doubt or disbelief at the earthly threshold would be 
a most serious impediment in his way. But we may say of 
Christ, at least, that He never would have come into the 
world to show men what their own reason could show 
them without His help, and that all His work about such 
earthly things was preparatory to a much higher work, 
to a revelation of that which lay beyond the eyes and ears 
of men, of that which He knew in His heavenly existence 
in the heavenly world. 

An illustration or two will, I hope, make all this plain. 
Christ had told Nicodemus that a man must be born 
again, or born from above, in order to see the kingdom of 
God. Nicodemus, after receiving his instructions on this 
great subject, exclaimed, how can these things be ? The 
Great Teacher, in reply, asks with surprise, how Nico- 
demus could be a master in Israel and not know these 
things — not be familiar with the necessity of regeneration 
before Christ had placed it within the view of his mind. 
The necessity of regeneration then, as the condition of 
entrance into the expected kingdom of God, was one of 
those earthly things which Nicodemus ought to have 
known before ; it was a truth, discoverable without reve- 
lation, and needing no messenger from Heaven to unfold 
it, not to know which argued surprising blindness on the 
part of a master in Israel. 

Now let us look at this truth, in order to see whether 
it be an earthly thing, or whether the groat Teacher did 
not expect too much from the educated Jew who was 
sitting at His feet. 



162 Earthly things must be believed 

Was it then a new doctrine in the world, — so new, that 
a learned Jew might well stare when it was first pro- 
pounded to him ? Let the prayer of the penitent, " Create 
in me a clean heart O God, and renew within me a right 
spirit," — answer. Or such a passage, again, as that in 
Ezekiel, " A new heart will I give you and a new spirit 
will I put within you ! and I will take away the stony 
heart out of your flesh, and will give you an heart of 
flesh." 

But perhaps, if not new, it was a heavenly truth, taught 
by inspiration first, and received on divine authority. But 
how is this consistent with the fact that through the Old 
Testament, essentially if not in so many words, it is im- 
plied in every exhortation to repentance, every descrip- 
tion of the state of men in their sins, every statement 
which makes of the godly or the holy a class distinct 
from the rest of mankind? We must admit then a 
natural foundation for it in the universal consciousness of 
sin. Was it strange that a Jew, whose sense of sin was 
kept alive by the moral and the ceremonial portions of 
the law, should feel his need of a spiritual renovation ? 
Was it strange, when he struggled with himself and 
found his fleshly appetites too strong, that he fell back on 
God as a helper, and admitted the presence of God's life- 
giving Spirit to be his great want ? At what other con- 
clusion, in fact, could any one arrive, who started from 
the fact of sin and was earnestly bent on improving his 
own character ? Surely such earthly teachers as conscious- 
ness and experience were enough to reveal this to an 
earnest Jewish soul. And may we not go farther, and 
say that every thoughtful mind among the Greeks and 
Komans who regarded the improvement of character to 
be of prime importance, came to the same result, — that 
the soul was in a state of disharmony, that life was in 
ruins, and that he would be man's greatest benefactor 
who could point out to man a better help than the dis- 



Before Heavenly can be. 163 

cipline of philosophy. Nor is this to be argued more 
from individual confessions, than from the success of the 
Gospel when it went through the heathen world preaching 
its heavenly announcements. Men received these because 
they were prepared for them by a sense of want and a 
sense of sin which had been smouldering in their hearts. 
To them the necessity of a new birth seemed like an old 
doctrine of their own experience, with a more vivid light 
thrown upon it by the Gospel. 

And so all those decisions which our moral nature pro- 
nounces, when the fact of sin is honestly admitted, are 
earthly things which Christ needed to preach, but did not 
first reveal. The ill desert of sin, the anger of God 
against sin, the judgment which will follow sin, the help- 
lessness of him who is under the yoke of sin — these and 
such as these are the earthly things which conscience and 
life had impressed on many a Jew, yes, and on many a 
heathen all over the world, from the realms of Druid 
worship to those lands in the East where men have 
sought to purify the soul by the torture of the body. 

Such, then, are the earthly things which our Saviour 
has in view : they are what man could discover for him- 
self, or, if by reason of his blindness he could not do this, 
might realize to be true as soon as they were told him. 
What, on the other hand, were the heavenly things? 
Plainly, such as no skill of man could discover, no philos- 
opher could reason out, no consciousness, or experience 
construct, — such as needed a Divine messenger from the 
skies to make them known. It may be that some intima- 
tions of these heavenly things were conveyed to God's 
people by the old prophets ; it may be that God's dealings 
of forbearance and compassion suggested the possibility of 
them, or of something like them ; it may even be that hu- 
man nature in thoughtful heathen minds is never without 
hopo of some light to come, some intervention or deliver- 
ance; but, granting all this, still, the heavenly things 



164 Earthly things must he believed 

needed to be disclosed by the same hand that had fanned 
these embers of hope, and had forborne to punish sin, and 
had inspired the prophets to promise future good. 

What these heavenly things were, our Lord lets us 
know in the verses following our text. They were such as 
the lifting up on the cross of the Son of man for the sins 
of the world, the love of God in sending His Son for man's 
salvation, and not for his condemnation. That a rescue of 
man in his sins was desirable — this might be freely ad- 
mitted ; that there was no other hope for him, this, too, 
experience might teach, but that God had resolved to in- 
terpose on man's behalf, in what way He would interpose, 
who was to be the deliverer, what He was to do for this 
end, what man would do to Him— all this was wrapped in 
impenetrable darkness, except so far as prophets had 
caught glimpses of heavenly realities, which they them- 
selves imperfectly understood. 

Those religious truths, then, which consciousness and 
experience reveal to a candid spirit, are called by our 
Lord earthly things ; those truths, on the other hand, 
which lie beyond the knowledge of man, and which only 
a messenger from heaven can reveal, He calls heavenly 
things. 

II. In illustration of these words of Christ, I remark, 
that belief in the earthly things is a necessary antecedent 
to belief in the heavenly. It is impossible for him who 
rejects the first class of truths to accept the other. No 
man can receive Christ, as a teacher come from God, and 
making known what no earthly teacher could discover, 
and yet deny or discard that which he assumes as the very 
reason for which His revelation is brought to man. Nay, 
further, no man can receive Christ without being made 
ready for Him by the teachings of conscience and of 
reason. The root of unbelief and of skepticism lies deeper 
down in the soul than many a man thinks : it is not merely 
rejection of the supernatural, or even the closing of the 



Before Heavenly can he, 165 

heart to God's infinite love, manifest in His dear Son, but 
it is shutting the ear to the very voice of nature crying 
within us, telling us of our immense needs, and v thus 
bringing us to a Christ all ready for our reception. And 
thus unbelief takes its true place : it is not only sin against 
Christ, blindness to revealed glories, insensibility to love 
from heaven, — it is, also, sin against nature, sin against 
reason, sin against the soul's deepest, most universal con- 
victions. 

Observe, then, that without faith in the earthly things 
pointed out above, Christ's heavenly revelation can have 
no interest, is not a practical subject, and is altogether im- 
probable. 

God must have manifested Himself in Christ, for some 
good reason lying outside of the revelation itself? It was 
not in order to make a revelation for its own sake, that 
Christ was sent, but it was for some cause arising out of 
the nature and condition of man. It was to provide a 
remedy for some existing evil, and for some evil bearing 
a proportion in its magnitude to the grandeur of the in- 
tervention. But the evil, in order to be cured, must be 
felt and acknowledged, for there are no magical processes 
in God's government, there is no way of getting rid of 
evil in man's nature or in human society without the ef- 
fective co-operation of man himself. Now such co-opera- 
tion is prevented, not only by unbelief in the value of the 
remedy, but just as much by unbelief in the need of any 
remedy at all. How is man to discover his need of a 
remedy ? Not from the revelation which places it within 
his reach, — although the uses of this may be very great 
in drawing his attention to moral maladies from which 
his eye was turned away before — but from his own moral 
sense, his consciousness of sin, his observation of the laws 
of character, his study of society, and of his fellow-men. 
Suppose now ho will not admit his sinfulness, can the 
revelation do him any good ? Can it even be received for 



166 Earthly things must be believed 

true? Will he not reason that if sin is no evil, there is no 
need ©f any remedy for it, much less of a remedy so mar- 
vellous as the incarnation and death of the Son of God? 
And if his premises are true, will he not have a right so 
to reason ? Suppose that among the multitudes preached 
to by the Apostle Paul, there had been one sinless man, 
one man utterly unconscious of having ever offended 
God, or suppose there had been one utterly devoid, by his 
nature, of a sense of good and evil. If the Apostle in 
his ignorance of human hearts had offered the salvation 
from heaven to either of these men, could either of them 
have received it ? Would it have been a revelation in- 
tended for either of them ? Was not the nature of both 
such that they would be obliged to reject a revelation 
pre-supposing sin? And so, too, all men who will not 
admit the great fact of their sinfulness, as discovered from 
their earthly experience, must reject, cannot fail to reject, 
a revelation from heaven which without that sinfulness 
can have no meaning. 

I have spoken exclusively of sinfulness in this argu- 
ment, because all the earthly things, all the religious doc- 
trines which Christ's heavenly doctrine pre-supposes, re- 
volve around this one fact of human sin. Our nature is 
such as sin makes it, our relations to God are determined 
by sin, our power of self-recovery is crippled by sin, the 
question whether God can pardon sin is an unsettled ques- 
tion before a positive offer is made,the future prospects of 
the soul are dark as long as there is sin past or present to 
be taken into account. Let me add too that sin itself, and 
sin alone makes us unwilling to admit those earthly things 
which furnish the reason why Christ came into the world, 
and thus prepares the way for all skepticism — that re- 
lating to our nature and obligations towards God, and 
that relating to the grand reeoverer. Sin seeks to deny 
its own existence, it pretends to be dead, it succeeds in 
making the soul insensible to its own state, and thus in- 
capable of receiving Christ. 



Before Heavenly can he. 167 

One or two illustrations will, I trust, make it plain, that 
the unbelief which rejects Christ has its root in the denial 
of those very truths which need no revelation for their es- 
tablishment. 

The philosophy called Pantheistic denies the freedom 
of man, and holds that sin is a necessary stage in the pro- 
gress of the development of a finite creature. Now be- 
tween such a view of man's moral nature and wants, and 
the coming of Christ from heaven to save him, how can 
there be any harmony? If man is unfree, why call on 
him to believe, or complain of him for not believing ? If 
sin is necessary for the finite mind, if it is an unavoidable 
stage of being, why not let it alone, and what wisdom is 
there in a remedial system which assumes that it can be 
cured ? And indeed how could a God who is Himself 
bound by necessity, who is in a process of evolution over 
which He has no control, out of His own free love send 
His Son on an errand of mercy into this world ? Or if 
He came, since nature is subject to the same bondage, 
how could He work miracles, which by the theory are im- 
possible ? Thus, then, there is no need of a revelation, nor 
any possibility of one, nor can there be any evidence for 
one. Is the rejection of Christ's heavenly message, then, 
on the part of the Pantheist, due chiefly to its nature, or 
its difficulties — or, is not the conclusion in this school a 
foregone one, good against any possible or conceivable 
revelation, good against any opening of heaven to earth, 
and any way from earth to heaven, — good even against 
that fixed consciousness of sin, which cleaves to the race, 
and which must, on Pantheistic principles, be pronounced 
to be a fixed illusion ? 

For another illustration of a more practical nature lot 
us look at the Pharisee. Here is a man who believes in 
the earthly tilings, as it seems, for he believes in God, even 
in the God of Israel. He believes that there is such a 
thing as sin, and it troubles him, us is evident by the 



168 Earth! j 1 things must be believed 

trouble he takes to get rid of the sense of it. Now, why 
does he reject the Saviour's claims to be the Christ of Gcd? 
It is because his view of sin, of his relation to God, of his 
character, is shallow. He can, by external observance, by 
decorum, by morality, by almsgiving, by bigoted attach- 
ment to the faith of his ancestors, — he can in these ways 
satisfy himself, and keep religion from invading the inner 
provinces of his soul. But the sacred Teacher has a battery 
to play upon him : He says, except a man be born again, 
be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the king- 
dom of God. Here Christ comes into border-land where 
the earthly and the heavenly meet ; He opens the world of 
spiritual power, and shows him that all works without the 
work of the Spirit are works of the flesh. This is a step 
beyond where he is willing to follow the Teacher come 
from God. This, which he ought to have found out of 
himself, he is not willing to admit. "How can these 
things be ?" But if not, how then can those other things 
be — those glorious announcements out of the heavens 
which Christ is all ready to tell him ? He must shrivel up 
in his skepticism. And he does not see all the while that 
he is passing judgment on himself. For if, with all his 
Jewish lore, and his access to the books of God, and his 
ready faith in a portion of the truth there announced, he 
cannot receive the doctrine of a new spiritual birth, when 
it is taught by Scripture and by experience, do not his 
blindness and unbelief show that he needs to have his eyes 
and his heart opened before he can enter into the kingdom 
of God? 

Not very unlike the state of the Pharisee is the state of 
that class of worldly men who live an easy, self-satisfied 
life, in entire unconcern for the future interests of their 
souls. If they had even the convictions of Plato in regard 
to the lapse of souls ; or the convictions of Aristotle in re- 
gard to the importance of character ; or the convictions of 
the Stoics in regard to the freedom and nobility of the vir- 



Before Heavenly can be, 169 

tuous soul, could they think so meanly as they do of their 
immortal part? If then, when Christ tells them thes$ 
things, which the best heathen in substance admit, and 
they believe not, how can they believe, when He begins to 
tell them of the strength of a Divine love which drew 
Him down into this world ? If He tells them about them- 
selves, and holds the mirror before them that they may 
look into their souls, and they believe not, how can they 
believe when He tells them of Himself, of this unknown 
being beyond the skies ? He can have no hold on their 
minds, He can be of no practical interest whatever, there is 
no good reason which they admit for His coming into the 
world. How then can they believe when He speaks of 
Himself as having come from God ? 

Thus it appears that when the earthly things of which 
Christ discourses are rejected, all that He says of heavenly 
truth will be rejected also. On the other hand, he who 
receives Christ's testimony concerning the former will 
believe what He says of the latter. 

We have already seen that in the condition of human 
nature and its wrong relations to God, — truths within the 
reach o! an earthly mind, — lie the reasons for Christ's com- 
ing into this world. But these reasons, it is plain 3 must be 
perceived and acknowledged by each soul that hears the 
Gospel, otherwise the Gospel can be of no use to him 
whatever. And the faith which receives Christ is a faith 
which contemplates His coming to relieve some acknow- 
ledged want, to cure some felt evil, to readjust some con- 
troversy with God of which there is a painful conscious- 
ness. Suppose now that an individual has reached this 
station of faith, that he believes in the sad reality of sin, 
that he believes in a discord between the soul and God, 
that he believes in the necessity of a new spiritual life, 
if men are to bo holy or blessed ; and suppose that Christ 
now manifests Himself to such a person, confirming first 
what He was but too conscious of before, and then adding 
8 



170 Earthly things must be believed 

a revelation of love and hope which offers through a 
crucified Saviour reconciliation to God and eternal life. 
What will be this man's treatment of the new heavenly 
things thus disclosed to him ? The first effect will be to 
confirm and deepen his impressions in regard to all those 
soul-truths which he previously admitted. The next effect 
must be to receive Christ's new message, and to come into 
a state of harmony with God. For what is there to pre- 
vent this. He has no prejudice to surmount. When 
Christ tells him of his sin and his need of a spiritual life, 
it is what he has already felt. He finds no difficulty in 
the evidences of Christ's mission. It carries with it, taken 
in connection with the character of its author, its own 
evidence. He cannot regard God's new revelation as in 
itself incredible. Far from this, it is very credible. He 
could not, indeed, have solved the problem of what God 
would do, but in what God has done he sees a beauty, 
a glory, a divine perfection of love and holiness, a suita- 
bleness for man's wants and sins, which confirm and are 
confirmed by the character and works of the Messenger. 
Thus he cannot but believe the heavenly things, the new 
revelation, since he believes the earthly things, the religious 
truths discernible by man and already known before the 
heavenly things are made manifest. 

We learn from these words of our Lord, as thus il- 
lustrated, that there is nothing strange in man's rejection 
of the Gospel. When we look at Christ's message from 
one point of view, when we take into account its offer of 
free grace, its promises and helps, the moral beauty of its 
founder, the new relations which it institutes between God 
and the soul, together with all the wants, the anxieties, 
the sorrows which it can be seen and be shown to relieve, 
we marvel that any one should stay away from this feast 
of love, and so we begin to think that there is some want 
of -evidence for the Gospel ; that difficulties in the Gospel, 
not to be explained, keep men with some show of reason 



Before Heavenly can be. 171 

in a state of skepticism. But, my friends, Christ and ex- 
perience teach us something truer than this. Skepticism 
or disbelief is not the marvel, but faith is the marvel. It 
would be more of an evidence against the Gospel that it 
should be believed by men as they are, than it is an evi- 
dence against the Gospel that men as they are reject it. 
If a Gospel came offering peace and life without any 
mention of an inner process in the soul, if the Saviour, 
with the evidence of His mission which we have now, had 
distributed external gifts, and changed society by His bene- 
volent agency, there would have been a crowding of all 
men to Him, He would not have left a few half fledged, 
doubting disciples in this world, when He left it for the 
Father. No ! the Gospel is not disbelieved for what it is 
and for its want of evidence, but for what it pre-supposes. 
It is the under-pinning of the Gospel which is unsightly 
in the eyes of so many. Christ is beautiful enough 
to penetrate with a kind of joy into the hearts of un- 
believers, but these dreadful postulates, these sad reali- 
ties of man's nature and of his relation to God — these are 
the barrier and must be the barrier between Christ and 
souls in their sins. It is not miracles, again, or difficul- 
ties touching the matter of inspiration, which keep men in 
unbelief. Remove these and there is some other intrench- 
ment behind them. But let a soul receive Christ's postu- 
lates, and miracles or no miracles, inspiration or no in- 
spiration, it throws its gates open wide, and joyfully sur- 
renders to Christ. This is shown by those instances, not 
uncommon, where men who had intrenched themselves 
for years in some scheme of thought opposing the founda- 
tions of the Gospel, suddenly, in affliction or adversity, or 
under the unusual influences of religion, abandon their 
scheme altogether and go over to Christ the redeemer. 
Christ is where He was before. Bat they denied the very 
reason why He came into the world. Therefore they 



172 Earthly things must be believed before Heavenly can be. 

could only disbelieve. Now they can only believe. The 
unbelief while it lasted was as natural, as inevitable as 
the faith was afterwards. 

Such cases show also that unbelief in the earthly things 
of religion is weak, so that there is hope in some favored 
moment of driving it from its place. Christ, when He 
speaks, is sustained by the deepest, most fixed things in 
human nature, by its standard of character, by its ideal 
of perfection, by its sense of want, by its sense of guilt, 
by its longing for the favor of God. These and such as 
these are the helpers of faith, the guides to Christ. These 
the objector overlooks when he thinks that the Gospel 
must fall under his blows. These the unbeliever covers 
up but cannot extinguish. And if, at some blest time, the 
Spirit calls the soul into the presence both of these things 
and of Christ, so that it sees itself and its deliverer face 
to face, — then it enters into the kingdom of God. 



SERMON XII. 
LOED, i believe; help thou mine unbelief. 

Mark ix. 24. And straightway the father of the child cried 
out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbe- 
lief. 

Christ more than once teaches us that great results 
depend on faith. He carried this principle into various 
departments and circumstances of life. At one time 
faith is made the condition of being recovered from dis- 
ease ; at another, of obtaining answers to prayer ; at 
another, of working miracles ; at another, of entering 
into the kingdom of heaven and of being saved from 
sin. In this latter aspect the command to believe in 
Christ has an importance beyond all other commands, 
because it makes faith the door of admission into a new, 
unique relation to Christ and to God the Father. 

Why faith is held by our Lord to be so important, 
and whether it has the same significance whenever it is 
called for, I shall not stop to inquire. My object is 
rather to try to discover what the faith or belief is of 
which our Lord speaks. What was it in the narrative 
of which our text forms a part, where the father, learn- 
ing from Christ that his faith would be followed by his 
child's restoration, cries out with tears, "Lord, I be- 
lieve ; help thou my unbelief ? " 

1. It is, then, not any and every kind of faith or con- 
fidence reposed in another person which will answer the 
demands of the Gospel. It is the fashion with some at 
the present day to attribute a kind of holiness or piety 
to faith as such, whether reposed in a heathen god or in 

173 



174 Lord, I Believe ; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 

the God of revelation. Nay, some would go further 
still, and call by the name of virtue all trust of the child 
in its mother, or of a friend in a friend. But it is plain 
that there may be reasonable and unreasonable confi- 
dence ; and so far are we from being authorized to re- 
gard all religious confidence as being virtuous, that it is 
safe to pronounce much of the confidence placed in God 
and in Christ positively wicked. When a man believes 
that God will forgive his sins without his confessing or 
forsaking them, this faith is evidence that he is a bad 
man. When a man believes, on the ground of a sup- 
posed conversion years ago, that he shall be saved let 
him commit whatever sin he will, he, too, is a bad man. 
The faith could not exist but for his blindness and his 
wickedness. The moment a ray of Divine light pierces 
into his soul, his whole framework of hope and confi- 
dence vanishes like a cloud ; and it is a sign of the 
dawn of a better state, if he gives it all up and seeks 
some safer refuge. We may say of faith as we may say 
of religion, that it has not, of necessity, a good moral 
quality. There may be bad religion and good religion, 
bad faith and good faith. This, indeed, it is safe to say, 
that where a man puts no confidence in God or man, is 
habitually distrustful, suspicious, closed up in his mind 
toward the evidences of trustworthiness that surround 
him — this is a dark sign ; and it is not easy to account 
for its existence but by supposing that a course of sin, 
hardening and corrupting, has shut him out from the 
avenues of communion with his fellow-beings and with 
God as a Father. Trust, like hope, is natural, and 
"springs eternal in the human breast." It is possible 
to be given over to the dark powers of distrust and de- 
spair, but this is only a perversion of our nature. Faith, 
then, being natural, is of itself neither good nor evil ; 
it may be reasonable or unreasonable, entertained to- 
ward the right object or the wrong. 



Lord, I Believe ; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 175 

2. The faith which Christ accepts is not measured 
exactly by the formulas of true doctrine ; but may be 
logically or philosophically imperfect. 

This statement, however, needs qualifications, because 
it has become customary, in the most recent times, to 
declaim against dogma, as if it had no office to serve in the 
system of religion. The declamations, I had almost said 
the tirades, against dogma proceed generally from those 
who believe the least possible ; but I must confess that 
they are somewhat justified by those in the church of 
Christ who demand a belief in the most possible ; as if 
every point of truth carried on it an electrical flash of 
salvation. Both extremes are wrong ; the first, because 
they sever truth from life, and fail to perceive that truth 
contains storehouses of motives for action ; the others, be- 
cause they pervert true faith into the reception of doc- 
trine, and, generally, of doctrine formulated by philoso- 
phers. On the one hand, it is an evil thing to join in the 
vulgar talk against doctrine ; for all that acts on life to 
raise it above the mere love of pleasure, the worship of 
the world, lies in the treasury of truth, and every religious 
truth, put into a formal statement, is a doctrine. You may 
estimate the sway of motives drawn from truth in form- 
ing life and character by supposing one truth of the 
Gospel to be lopped off after another. There is, we will 
suppose, no hereafter. This denial has passed into the 
opinions of men. Then all the considerations drawn 
from an eternal life are gone, and the world presses with 
tenfold force upon the soul. Drink your pleasure now, 
for life is soon to be snuffed out. Or kill yourself, if life 
is distasteful, for what are a few days more worth ? Or, 
again, suppose that God is indifferent to human conduct, 
that He will treat all alike, the wicked, as we call them, 
and the righteous. Then why should not men be indif- 
ferent ? Why should not human law be indifferent also ? 
For that which is not condemned and reprobated ac- 



176 Lord, I Believe; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 

cording to the principles of the general society of the 
universe, ought to be looked on with indulgence by hu- 
man law and feeling. Or, again, suppose that Christ 
neither lived for us nor died for us, but we have dis- 
covered that there is a mistake about His life, and that 
His death was in the natural order of things, unpurposed 
and without an object. Then surely all the influences 
from Him must be cut off, and that civilization which we 
call Christian, beginning from a work on an individual 
soul and ending in a pure society of loving and sanctified 
souls, must be overturned also. The fact is, that they 
who decry dogma only put a new dogma in the place of 
that which they speak against. There were united, a few 
years ago, in the righteous attack on slavery men who re- 
ceived and men who rejected Christ. The latter clung 
to the dogma of human rights and equality with as much 
earnestness, nay, often with as much intolerance, as if 
there were no other truth in the universe. 

On the other hand, the faith which Christ accepts need 
not grasp hold of a system of truth, nor of the whole of 
truth, but it may be a faith which confines itself within 
a narrow compass. The sticklers for salvation by doc- 
trine in times past have generally defended points which 
were outposts, important, no doubt, but not essential for 
the salvation of the soul. They kept on defending until 
every small redoubt acquired a prime importance in their 
minds, and they who did not think with them were sus- 
pected or denounced. But, as a besieged town, well pro- 
visioned, may afford to abandon its outworks and con- 
centrate all effort on the main defences, so it may be 
necessary for some minds, at times, to lean on a few truths 
which have come home to the soul with power. If you 
ask what and how many these are, I am unable to answer. 
I can only say here that, however few they are, if by their 
help a real, loving connection be established between a 
life-giving Saviour and a soul thirsting for the waters of 



Lord, I Believe; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 177 

life, I believe — yes, I know — that the good Lord will not 
turn such away. 

Here we may add, that the faith which Christ accepts 
does not of necessity involve the power of defining, ex- 
plaining, or defending the truth. If you were to ask a 
child or a friend what was his reason for confidence in a 
parent or another friend, perhaps the answer would cost 
some time and reflection ; perhaps, after all, it would 
not express the grounds for the confidence with entire 
accuracy. But is not the confidence or the love that is 
sure of its own existence more desirable than that state 
of mind that dives down and brings up reasons why the 
feeling exists ? You may ask an honest, true-hearted, 
but unlettered Christian what faith is, and he may not 
be able to tell you. Is it necessary for the exercise of 
faith that he should be able to give a logical definition 
of it ? You may be sure that in an argument an adroit 
infidel will win the case over a weak or ignorant be- 
liever ; and so he goes away, to boast that Christianity 
is nothing but prejudice, irrational conviction, unfounded 
hope and joy. Such it would be if the unlettered be- 
liever believed an argument which he could not follow 
on a weighing, pro and con, of the evidences for the 
Gospel. But if faith is a sinful soul's placing of itself 
in the hands of Christ, to be saved from its sins by Him, 
what would be the profit of carrying the soul through 
this preparatory school of arguments ? Do arguments 
prove its sins ; and if not, ought they to prove its need 
of redemption ? Does not Christ, even to the feeble 
judgment of a child — as he reads of Him or hears of 
Him — seem worthy of confidence ? Does not an honest, 
trustful soul perceive at once that Christ cannot deceive 
him ? And so he believes, only to have his faith con- 
firmed by experience, the best of all arguments. 

3. The faith which Christ accepts may be a wavering 
one as it regards intellectual conviction — it may bo at 



178" Lord, I Believe ; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 

the time a struggle between faith and doubt. It may 
say, " Lord, I believe ; help my unbelief." Faith is not 
measured by Him exactly according to the amount of 
confidence that a man entertains in his system or in his 
good estate. There may be a confident faith that bears 
small or no fruit ; there may be a wavering and trembling 
faith which will not let go of Christ and which purifies 
the soul. 

Without question that man is the happiest, and the 
most even and fruitful in his Christian life, who has 
passed beyond the sea of doubt, has nothing to do now 
but to unite all the moving powers of his life in the 
service of his Divine Saviour. We would not say a word 
against longings for a firm persuasion that the Gospel 
is true, or for an undoubting reliance on Christ for 
salvation, or for an assured hope of personal salvation 
that never fluctuates. But what we have said is true, 
notwithstanding — that a faith which is conscious, as it 
were, of its own want of faith, may be a stronger prin- 
ciple in one man's life and heart than a faith that never 
doubts may be in those of another. 

We must bring into the estimate here, first, the dif- 
ferent natures of men. Some are born to be wary, cau- 
tious, afraid of deception, unsatisfied until they have 
searched the whole field of truth over and over, while 
others accept conclusions speedily, w ithout much sifting, 
without fear of having them overturned. Some forget 
the grounds on which they have based their judgments, 
and need to renew the course of argument afterward. 
Others, when once decided in an opinion, cling to it with 
tough pertinacity. Some are shaken by the opinions of 
their fellow-men, either from a sense of the weakness of 
their own faculties, or through an experience of past 
mistakes ; others are independent and cannot be moved 
from their position by very weighty considerations. 
Mental differences, such as these, must be taken into ac- 



Lord, I Believe j Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 179 

count, in justice, by every fair-minded person. That the 
good Father of all takes them into His equitable account, 
I have no question. It is pleasant to think of the Di- 
vine charity, of our Lord in the circle of His disciples, 
bearing with and making available such opposite char- 
acters as those of Thomas and Peter. There was no 
want of love in the heart of Thomas, He was the man 
to say, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him," 
when Christ contemplated a journey into the neighbor- 
hood of Jerusalem, to visit Lazarus, when His enemies 
were ready to take His life. Here you see strong affec- 
tion, joined with apprehensiveness as to the future ; you 
see a nature prone to look on the dark side. And so, 
when the other disciples tell him that they have seen the 
Lord risen from the dead, Thomas says, in effect, It is too 
good to be true, and doubts what he wishes more than 
all things, because he is afraid to be disappointed. This 
character of his might have led him to deny the reality 
of Christ's claims, as it might have led him into despair, 
had not his changeless friend saved him when the cur- 
rents of his soul were running strong toward dark un- 
belief. And so Peter, the first to see into the Divine 
reality of Christ, the first to betray Him, was schooled, 
through his sins, into a nobler, less self-sufficient courage. 
And so, my friends, is it not a comfort to think that the 
same Lord can take us, all of us, if we will let Him, in 
spite of all trembling doubts, all dangerous self-confi- 
dence, and briug us in our experience into perfect Chris- 
tian manhood ? 

I have spoken of different natures in so far, especially, 
as our constitutional differences affect our belief in the 
truth of the Gospel on more or less proof. I may add 
to this the differences of men as to trustfulness. It lakes 
a long time for some men to make up their minds about 
the characters of others, while it is equally common to 
see mun who confide at oiicl, judge as if by a llash of 



180 Lord, I Believe ; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 

discernment, and have no fear that they shall find their 
confidence misplaced. The same differences must influ- 
ence the religious life. One will hesitate, will doubt 
whether he is worthy, whether salvation is for him, 
whether the promises of God reach his case ; he will look 
within, and, finding this hesitating spirit, will gather 
from it new grounds of doubt ; another will simply and 
calmly trust in the all- sufficiency and all-willingness of 
Christ, hardly thinking of himself at all. Yet they both 
may have a true faith, and in a struggle of temptation 
the first of the two may be the firmer and the braver. 

So, also, strong conceptions of what it is to fail in the 
Christian life — an imagination that reaches on through 
ages of the soul's existence, united, perhaps, with some 
self-distrust — may make one find it hard to rest with 
confidence on any foundation whatever. It is the highest 
triumph of the Gospel if it can inspire a faith that will 
lift the soul above the disturbing force of such possi- 
bilities. Whenever a mind is so constituted as to fear 
possible misjudgments concerning character, possible 
mistakes in regard to essential truth, to question its past 
conclusions as not having the force of demonstration, 
and so to rely on nothing, whether it be historical fact 
or mental deduction — this is indeed an unhappy nature, 
and yet such a nature can exercise a true, acceptable 
faith in the Saviour of sinners. 

4 A faith that desponds under a sense of its own 
feebleness may be true faith, and be accepted, if sincere. 
Here we find great comfort in the words, " Lord, I be- 
live ; help thou mine unbelief." 

There are two states of mind which may draw especial 
comfort from words like these. One is where there is 
a relatively and comparatively strong faith, which yet 
appears weak to him who has it. No one can judge 
with accuracy of the strength of his sensibilities or 
mental exercises by direct consciousness. As for com- 



Lord, I Believe ; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 181 

paring them with similar states of other minds, such a 
measurement is full of error and uncertainty. Some 
Christians express more than they feel, others less. Some 
are susceptible of impressions from one part of truth, 
which may have les3 force of impression for you or me. 
It is really vain, and it is often useless and worthless, to 
judge of what I ought to feel, or even of what I do feel, 
by the experience of others as they describe it. Nor 
can we judge of ourselves with entire accuracy by com- 
paring our present with our past states ; for either 
imagination may color the past too highly, or the feat- 
ures of the past may have faded out of our memory. 
But so it is that Christians often distress themselves by 
referring their feelings to such wrong standards. 

Again, some minds can form to themselves a very high 
ideal, which almost of course involves dissatisfaction 
with their present religious life. Some have a vision of 
the serene, unclouded confidence with which we may 
rest on Christ, without a doubt of the reality of His mis- 
sion and Messiahship ; without a doubt of His willing- 
ness to receive them as disciples and friends ; without a 
doubt that this blessed union with their Divine lover has 
been consummated ; without any stray fear flitting across 
the soul's unclouded sky. This ideal is a glorious 
vision, keeping in front of them on the life-journey, 
precious as a standard and a source of inspiration, but 
it reveals also imperfections and shortcomings. " Let 
it go before thee, O Christian believer, but do not look 
to it for comfort or help. When thy faith seems to thee 
to be feeble, halting, mixed, Christ can still accept 
thee. Thy very cry, 'Help my unbelief,' if it be thy 
honest utterance, implies faith in Him in whom thou 
eeemest to put so little faith. Why tell Him of thy 
weakness, thy darkness, if thou believest not that in 
Him dwell all pity and all power ? " 

But there are those whose faith is really mingled with 



182 Lord, I Believe ; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 

much unbelief and uncertainty. If judged by any fair 
practical test, such as efficiency and conquering strength, 
their faith must appear to them to be weak, and prob- 
ably it is really, as well as relatively, weak. It may be 
a rudimental faith, or an initial faith, just born amid 
perplexities, and meeting at once intellectual and prac- 
tical problems which are hard for the oldest, most ex- 
perienced Christian to solve. And [in an audience like 
that which I address] I cannot forget how common it is, 
especially for a young person of education in the present 
age, at the outset of a religious life, to meet with intel- 
lectual difficulties which distress him, make him look on 
himself with distrust, and draw him away from that life 
of practical religion to which he is called. These diffi- 
culties are in some respects beyond his solution. They 
may be real ones, which ought to have weight given 
them by any honest mind ; or they may be such as the 
experience of life will enable him to outgrow. To have 
this load of problem before him, together with the coun- 
teraction of old sinful habits, is to him a new kind of 
life. It is a substitution of care and unrest for a life, 
perhaps, of thoughtlessness and of gayety of heart. Is 
this, he will say, What the Gospel promised me — unrest, 
doubt, perplexity? Is the fault in me or in the system 
of truth ? If in me, have I a right to regard myself as a 
believer, when the picture of a believer is that of a man 
who knows in whoni he has believed ? Or is it in the 
truth ? But why should truth, which is mainly historical 
truth, like that of the Gospel, be hard to be found, or 
have uncertain evidence ? Why should so many batter- 
ing-rams be tearing down its walls in the present age, if 
it is impregnable and durable. 

To such a person I would say, that there are real diffi- 
culties in revelation, and there is no sin in doubt, except 
when doubt itself proceeds directly from sin. Nor can 
you expect to have all your doubts solved, if you should 



Zord, I Believe; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 183 

study and speculate for a century. There will be, until 
the doom, opportunity given to the studious mind to 
make objections, doctrinal or historical, against revela- 
tion. I do not see how it could well be otherwise ; at all 
events, this is the fact. And so, if religion grew up by 
overcoming intellectual difficulties ; or if you must re- 
gard yourself as no Christian at all until you shall have 
overcome your own peculiar ones — your case would be 
a very hard one. But there is another course to take. 
You may put off most of your hard problems until your 
shoulders are stronger ; and meanwhile, if the very ele- 
ments of the Gospel are plain to you, act on them and live 
by them. If you think that your faith is weak, very 
likely it is so ; but, weak as it is, it will enable you to com- 
prehend what the moral power of the Gospel is. Your 
brief, poor experience is enough to show you what 
Christ can be to the soul that receives Him ; and what 
the soul itself can be under the sway of motives drawn 
from Him. If you have even a flickering faith, O let it 
not go out ; and do not doubt that the compassionate 
Master, such as you find Him in the Scriptures, will help 
your unbelief. I verily believe, if you can hold on to 
enough of truth to receive Christ as a helper, and will act 
under its power, that your way will become clearer the 
farther you advance ; that experience will remove some 
difficulties and maturer thought others ; while the re- 
siduum will no more affect you than the unsolved prob- 
lems of science affect your intellectual enjoyment. 

And thus we see, finally, that the faith which Christ ac- 
cepts is mainly an act of the soul and of the heart, and 
only in a subordinate sense an operation of the intellect. 

We have seen that a person can believe all truth, can 
have a system of doctrine and a full theology, without 
the slightest faith ; while an ignorant man, or a child, 
with only a small amount of truth in his possession, can 
put an unwavering trust in Christ ; and that a hesitating 



184 Lord, I Believe; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 

mind, encompassed with doubts and in the very sense 
of its uncertainties, can believe when it seems to itself 
to disbelieve. There may be little knowledge, but there 
must be trust enough to take Christ as a guide, & friend, 
and a hope. The foundation of trust is laid in a sense of 
our blindness and our sinfulness ; together with such a 
belief in the honesty of Christ in what He says of Himself 
and what He offers to us, that we can act on His declara- 
tions. Trust draws out of Christ's words and promises 
motives to action ; from a sense of want and a belief in 
the sufficiency of the supply it leads the soul on to Christ. 
By His love our love is awakened, and it purines the heart 
by bringing it where the inspiring and ennobling im- 
pulses to a holy life can have their full sway over our 
lives and characters. Is not trust, then, or faith, one of 
the simplest things in the world ? The wants out of 
which it grows are felt and not reasoned out. If we had 
no sin to be taken away, or would not believe that we 
have, then, it is true, we could feel no need of such a 
friend as our Divine Master. But if He is fitted to our 
nature as the mother is fitted to the child, it seems as if, 
without any long preparation, without any philosophical 
thought, without any solution of our doubts that harass 
us — if only we can see Him in His beauty and kindness, 
as the infant looks into the mother's eye — we ought to go 
to Him, and to take what He has to give us, even as the 
child takes the nourishment from his mother. Is not 
this, then, a blessed salvation in which all — the child, the 
old philosopher, the trembling doubter, the confirmed 
believer, the trained member of a Christian family, the 
dark-minded heathen, all — all can partake alike, and by 
an act so simple that it begins before reflection ? 

You, then, who are burdened with intellectual doubts. 
Christ does not reject you for this any more than He re- 
jects you because you are a sinner. Do you want Him ? 
Come to Him as you are. I do not say that He will solve 



Zord, I Believe ; Help Thou Mine Unbelief. 185 

all riddles for you ; I do not believe that He will. That 
is not God's way of making men good. But I say that 
trust, or some more sure inward guide, will help you 
to understand some things that you do not understand 
now, and to put a new estimate on intellectual satisfac- 
tions as compared with the soul's rest. And I say that 
experience will lend its aid until you can utter, with 
unfaltering tongue, those words of Paul, "I know 
whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able 
to keep that which I committed unto Him against that 
day." 

And you who have tried Christ as a Saviour and have 
found Him faithful, trustworthy, true to your soul's best 
interests and desires, but have found yourselves, as you 
think, unfaithful to Him, so that your very belief in Him 
seems to be unbelief — I invite you to come to Him in 
the simplicity of childlike trust this day. It may be 
that the Gospel has so sharpened your soul's eye and 
raised your standard of perfection, that you condemn 
your faith as being weak when it is not weak. Or, on 
the other hand, it may be that you judge yourself but 
too justly. However this is, be thankful that Christ 
takes into His school all classes of believers ; pitying all 
and strengthening all that come unto God by Him. He 
is able to save all unto the uttermost. 



SEKMON XIIL 

PETER HELPED BY HIS FALL TO STRENGTHEN HIS 
BRETHREN. 

Luke xxii. 32. Second clause. And when thou art converted, strength- 
en thy brethren. 

The deplorable sin of Peter was not destined to cut him 
off from Christian hope or from the power of serving his 
Master. He was to be converted anew, and when so con- 
verted, he was to have the office as well as the faculty of 
strengthening his brethren. 

These words of our Lord are not a little remarkable, 
On the first view of such a crime as Peter's, we should 
suppose that all his influence over his brethren, all his 
ability to do good, his capacity to impart strength to others, 
were lost, and that forever. At the most, he could only 
hope to be forgiven, and to live as an unnoticed believer, 
brooding in the shade over his ingratitude and content to 
take an obscure place during the remainder of his life. 

For consider in what position he would now be placed. 

First his own shame would naturally bring with it a 
sense of weakness, and would furnish a good reason for 
concentrating his efforts upon himself. The power of 
shame who does not know, who has acted unwisely or 
wickedly, when better things were expected of him, when 
he expected better things of himself, above all when he 
had made a profession which implied a high standard of 
conduct. The man himself is pierced and stung by a most 
painful consciousness of being unworthy. How can he 
have the courage to warn or comfort his brethren, when 
he has sunk lower than all the others ! He reads his 
186 



Peter helped by his fall to strengthen his brethren. 1 87 

shame, also, in the countenances and the carriage of all 
who come in his way. They reflect back on him, like so 
many mirrors, the traits of his own fallen character. They 
reaffirm his verdict against himself. How then can he 
face them, how can he presume to aid them in their strug- 
gles against sin, when every admonition, every instruction 
given to them reminds him of his own lapse ! He will b£ 
apt then to feel that the remainder of life will be fitliest 
spent in seeking to cure himself in penitential retirement. 
What more can he do than to save himself, and serve as a 
passive warning and example ! 

Again, his brethren in such a case would naturally 
lower their opinion of him. A sin, the recovery from 
which is like a second conversion, is a startling thing to a 
Christian Church. The Christian body is a holy brother- 
hood; holiness is the very essence of their renewed charac- 
ter: when, therefore, one of their number, above all one 
who, like Peter, has stood high in the affections and the 
confidence of his brethren, falls away, what can prevent a 
loss of confidence ? Is it strange, that suspicion at times 
goes to an unjust, to a cruel extreme, and denies to such a 
man the possession of the Christian character? At all 
events, the opinion of him, which was so high before, is 
greatly lowered, and the power with which he acted on 
others before must be greatly lessened, if not wholly 
destroyed. 

Moreover, thirdly, his brethren will naturally feel that 
a man of such glaring sins is not the man to be put fore- 
most in their efforts to do good outside of the Church. 
"We want a man for our representative" — they will be 
apt to say — " who, when he goes out among men, will reflect 
no dishonor on us, who will not be met by taunts and 
jeers, as having deserted the cause which he advocates in 
its times of danger. Would not a general, convicted of 
cowardice, be likely to encourage the foe, would he be the 
best man to send against them, would he smite them with 



188 Peter helped by his fall 

terror? Let the man of glaring sins retire into the ranks; 
let him take the humblest place, and not seek to convert 
others, after he has fallen so low as to need a new conver- 
sion himself." 

Such reflections have reason and justice in them, but 
they are not the suggestions of the highest Christian 
feeling. Our Lord points us to higher wisdom, to a wis- 
dom built on that glorious system of grace which makes 
use of our sins as so many warnings to us, so many helps 
in the future, so many arguments for the glory of Divine 
forgiveness. 

Let us then turn our thoughts to the power which such 
a man as Peter acquires, from his very sins, of strengthen- 
ing his brethren. 

And here let no one suppose that sin, which is moral 
weakness, can of itself in any way or by any experience 
be a source of strength. Innocence, sinlessness alone is 
strength. Sin is feebleness, and that is the falsest of all 
doctrines, the most inconsistent of all with our experience, 
which affirms that sin is a necessary stage through which 
a finite being must pass towards moral perfection ; that a 
time is coming in the future, when all blots and blemishes 
of character will wipe themselves out, when ail falsehoods, 
all dishonors, all selfishness will blossom into perfect 
benevolence, nobility and truth. It is the best possible 
thing never to have sinned. It is the next best to be re- 
covered from sin. He is the best Christian who leads the 
holiest life. And no sin in the Christian can bring him 
of itself into holiness. It rather destroys his peace, sepa- 
rates him from God, fills him with self-distrust. 

But, notwithstanding all this, it may be true, under a 
system of grace, that the manifestation of character which 
is made by a particular sin may turn into a blessing to him 
who is allowed to fall into it. In this case it is not sin, 
but an outward siri that is the source of good, and this is 
accomplished, not in the ordinary course of things, but 



To strengthen his brethren. 189 

through the grace of the Gospel. Of two persons in the 
same moral condition before the eye of God one may be 
untempted and so far forth innocent, while the other yields 
to a temptation, before which the first also would have 
fallen, had it been allowed to assail him. Now I say 
in such a case as this the outward sin may under the 
Gospel be made a blessing to him who commits it ; nay, 
more, the blessing may extend beyond himself to all 
around him. He may become a wiser, better, stronger 
Christian than he was before. 

1. And this will be made apparent, if we consider first 
that in this way he arrives at a better knowledge of his 
own character and is impressively warned against his own 
faults. 

A Christian believer may have defects of character 
such as pride, or self-confidence, or envy, or animosity, 
without being aware of them. In the even flow of his life 
there may be no conflicts with besetting sin, and there- 
fore no revelation is made to himself of what he is and 
what he can do by his experience. Perhaps even he may 
be aware of his peculiar biases to evil, yet by mere self- 
examination he is incapable of measuring their strength. 
He contemplates only an imaginary trial, and gains an 
easy victory, because he cannot estimate the force of those 
real incitements to evil that attack him in the moment of 
temptation. He is thus profoundly ignorant of himself. 
He says with Peter, "Though all should betray thee, yet 
will not I." Now how is such a person to become a better 
and a wiser man, without some new discovery of himself, 
and how can he make this discovery except by being left 
to himself amid the assaults of temptation ? We make 
no progress in any kind of excellence when we are self- 
ignorant, and our ignorance can be broken through only 
by a disclosure of our weakness to our own eyes — a dis- 
closure so vivid as to make a permanent impression. In 
short, temptation is necessary for self-knowledge, and 



190 Peter helped by his fall 

yielding to sin is necessary, because our state of mind in- 
volves it. The discovery we make is worth the sin, 
because we shall thus be enabled to triumph over future 
temptation and to avoid future sin. 

And not only does the Christian thus arrive at a know- 
ledge of himself, but at the same time he is put on his 
guard for the future. No lessons are so impressive as 
those which our mistakes teach us. In the province of 
mere knowledge what recollections are so lasting as those 
which our displays of ignorance before ethers fasten upon 
our memories. Or what incentives to better manners are 
so efficacious as the keen sense of mortification, when we 
have violated the laws of polite society. Many a man 
has become learned because he made ignominious mis- 
takes ; many a man has become polished, because his ill- 
breeding has become evident to himself. Can the same 
principle fail of acting in the spiritual sphere, if the hope 
of forgiveness be not cut off? Will not the sin, the at- 
tendant self-knowledge, the dread of future lapses and 
future shame be thus so many blessings? May not he 
who is converted, become stronger, more careful, wiser, 
and therefore, so far as his own character is concerned, 
better able to strengthen his brethren. 

All this is illustrated by the case of Peter. His great 
fault was self-confidence and impetuous haste in feeling 
and acting, — qualities capable by discipline, such as Christ 
intended for him, of being softened down into manly self- 
reliance, and earnest, toilsome affection, and yet likely, 
before they assumed such shapes, to lead him into most 
serious errors. It is interesting to notice how he tried the 
feelings and exercised the forbearance of the Master 
beyond all the other disciples, and how Christ, with a full 
discernment of his faults, was educating him for a noble 
work in the world. The crisis in his character came at 
length, when with a courage which we cannot but admire, 
yet with a presumption which not even Christ's predictions 



To strengthen his brethren. 191 

could restrain, he threw himself into dangers to which he 
was unequal. He courted the trial ; and woful sin, never 
to be forgotten sin, was the result. But when he went out 
and wept bitterly, a lesson was engraven on his memory 
as lasting as his existence. He now understood himself, 
he was on his guard agaiust himself, he lost all of his pre- 
sumption and self-confidence but none of his courage. 
His renewed, purified character, fitted him to encourage 
his brethren, and to take the lead in the great work of 
preaching Christ to the world. We must say, then, that 
Christ's declaration concerning him was strikingly ful- 
filled ; and that he was better, not because he sinned, but 
because the sin that was in him was made to stand out 
before his eyes in its real deformity. 

2. But secondly, a person who is thus recovered from 
his sins has the practical power derived from a renewed 
hope of forgiveness. The influences of this hope of 
pardon on the character can hardly be estimated too high, 
but they vary with the strength and the vividness of the 
hope, or in other words, with the impression which the 
diviue grace displayed in pardon makes upon the soul. 
He who feels sin to be a very great evil, who feels that 
his own sins have been very great, will be prepared to 
magnify the grace of God in forgiveness ; and in the same 
proportion gratitude, love, humility, the sense of depend- 
ence, the feeling of obligation will be increased. Such is 
the decision of our Saviour. " When they had nothing to 
pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, 
which of them will love him most? Simon answered and 
said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most ? And 
He said unto him, thou hast rightly judged." But the 
process here, by which sin ends in love is really a sub- 
jective one. We do not love much because we have much 
forgiven, but because we feel that we have much forgiven. 
And this feeling that we have much forgiven, depends 
again for its depth on our estimate of our sins. Here we 



192 Peter helped by his fall 

reach the explanation why an open outward sin, when re- 
pented of and forgiven, may bind us more closely to 
divine grace, and strengthen within us the principles on 
which Christian activity depends to a greater degree, than 
if our sin had lurked only in the secret places of the 
heart. Coming out into open day it can be better mea- 
sured by such finite minds as ours ; it can be seen in its 
full strength, as overleaping restraint, as a wild, resistless 
force which will reach its object in spite of conscience and 
of shame. He who hateth his brother is a murderer, 
says the Apostle John, but it is only when we see the 
murderous dispositions of a malignant soul breaking out 
into slander or violence, that we can properly judge what 
a fearful power of sin had lain there before. So too it is 
only when we find sin within us bursting forth like a 
deluge of fire, that we can understand ourselves. Under- 
standing ourselves, we measure divine grace better, and 
measuring divine grace, we go forth into our future lives 
with new impressions, with a renewed hope. We are 
better qualified to speak to others of what the grace of 
God can do. We are enabled to set a higher value on the 
Gospel of forgiveness, and to make known how we value 
it by the labors of consecrated lives. Grace is more of a 
reality to us, than it ever was before. 

I would not be understood here as saying that Chris- 
tian believers need to sin openly and grossly in order to 
magnify the grace of the gospel. Such a remark would 
be put to shame by the great multitudes of most saintly 
characters, who have been led in all innocence up to the 
very summit of Christian attainments, who, without temp- 
tation, without external outbreaking sin, have come to a 
most enviable acquaintance with the heights and depths 
of divine love. Oh, that there were more of such ! But I 
mean to say that sometimes true, but self-ignorant Chris- 
tians are led to know what they are and what Christ can 
do for them by being left to themselves and being suffered 



To strengthen his brethren. 193 

to fall before temptation. Then they know what grace 
means ; then they can speak of it in all humility, and yet 
with assurance to their brethren ; then they can fortify 
others against temptation ; then especially they can make 
earnest, mighty preachers of righteousness and of divine 
love. In their self-ignorance they were only capable of 
falling : now they rise into a strong Christian life which 
rests on divine grace, and can testify to others concerning 
the gospel of the grace of God. 

And how was it with Peter ? Can we doubt that when, 
at Pentecost, he preached repentance and baptism for the 
remission of sins, his own experience a few weeks before 
helped him as he spoke ; that knowing full well what re- 
mission was, and what the marvellous compassion of 
Christ was, he brought, whenever he preached, the trea- 
sures of his unfading memory before a world in sin ? Or, 
when we read his first epistle, — that epistle of hope as it 
has been called, — as, for instance, where he speaks of be- 
lievers being begotten again to a lively hope through the 
resurrection of Christ from the dead, — can we doubt that 
indelibly associating his own denial of the Master with 
the Master's death and resurrection, he was thus rendered 
perpetually humble, grateful, and useful ? 

3. A person in Peter's condition appeals to the affections 
of the Church, and he has a closer hold upon them than if 
he had never become a kind of representative of Divine 
grace. 

A principal means of doing good to our brethren is the 
confidence we inspire, and this confidence depends princi- 
pally on the exhibition of a clear Christian character. 
Within the Christian Church the same spirit prevails 
which God has. As He views the penitent sinner with 
favor, although his sins may have been as scarlet, so un- 
questioned conversion from the depths of sin establishes 
a man in the regards of those who believe in divine grace. 
The Church pardons those whom God pardons, ami loves 
9 



194 Peter helped by his fall 

those whom. God loves. It was nothing against Paul, it 
abridged the affections of none towards him that he had 
persecuted the Church of God — nay rather, as he walked 
around, a monument of that mercy which he once con- 
temned and hated, he awakened in all a livelier sense of 
the excellence of redemption, and was endeared to all as a 
monument of the grace of Christ. Thus he was enabled 
to win his way to a higher influence than he could other- 
wise have attained. And the same is true when a Chris- 
tian man, like Peter, is recovered from a lapse, and gives 
evidence of sincere conversion. He may have disgraced 
the body to which he belongs, he may have caused many 
to mourn over him, he must have awakened doubts in re- 
gard to his own sincerity, he may even have disturbed 
some minds with the suspicion that there is no such thing 
as conversion or as a genuine Christian life. But when 
his character shines again as gold, all this is forgiven and 
forgotten. He returns to his home in the affections of 
Christ's people, with an experience of the bitterness of sin, 
with an experience of the power of the Gospel, which is 
fitted to keep others from falling, to excite their thauk- 
givings, to kindle their affection as for one saved from 
drowning or the flames. And why should not such a one 
be able to recover, and even more than recover, his old 
place, his old influence ? What is to prevent this on their 
part ? They believe in restoring grace. They know 
that the same nature is in them. They do not measure 
character, as Pharisees do, by external acts alone, but 
they know that important as external acts are, a Christian, 
whose faults are patent to all, may be, on the whole, a 
better man, a nobler character, than another Christian 
whose life runs along on an unbroken level, never falling 
below the standard of his brethren, never rising into 
marked excellence. And so they can trust him, they can 
be willing to learn from hi n. And he, strong in their con- 
fidence, can seek to repair whatever wrong he has done to 



To strengthen his brethren. 195 

Christ and to His cause. He has a deeper experience, 
from which he can draw lessons of warning, new motives 
to be more earnest in the desire to recover the ground he 
has lost, more humility and dependence on Divine strength, 
fitting him to work for God with more caution in the fu- 
ture and with more success. 

We conclude these meditations with the thought that 
no other system except the Christian system of grace 
could thus afford to honor penitence, because no other 
gives such testimony against sin. It is because Christi- 
anity is so holy, that it can take hold of the fallen to lift 
them out of the mire in which they have sunk, and can 
make use of those even who have dishonored Christ, as 
promoters of His cause before a censorious and Pharisaical 
world. In the early church there was a stricter party, 
who withdrew entirely the confidence of the communities 
where they had the control, from such as had lapsed in 
times of persecution. But while it was altogether right 
to insist on full proof of repentance, their rigor showed 
that they did not fully comprehend the Gospel. While 
they honored it on one side, they departed from its spirit 
on another. Paul felt not so. The man who had dis- 
graced Christianity at Corinth, when he evinced thorough 
repentance, was taken back into a holy body, to be a 
blessing again, and to be blest in that sacred circle. But 
if the Gospel had been another kind of religion, if external 
purity of morals had been its highest aim, then doubtless 
every marked lapse would have been visited with hopeless 
exclusion, lest the white, or rather the whitewashed, robes 
of the pure should be soiled by the contact of the unclean. 
But Christ came to call sinners to repentance, and so His 
Church is a blessed sort of hospital, where the faulty and 
guilty can be cured ; where bitter, ineffaceable memories, 
instead of overwhelming the soul in sorrow, can be the 
starting-point of a new life, can be a motive to new 
fidelity, a warning against return to sin ; where the sym- 



106 Peter helped by his fall to strengthen his brethren. 

pathies aroused by a common experience can greet the 
penitent on his return ; and where those whose sin-malady 
has been of a more hidden sort, knowing that they, too, 
belong to the class of the recovered, can welcome him as a 
fellow in suffering, a fellow in salvation. 

And if we, my Christian friends, would draw all the use 
we can from this subject, we shall feel that the recollection 
of our sins ought to guide us not only into repentance, but 
into the purpose of leading a more useful life in the time 
to come. Most of us may have no occasion to reproach 
ourselves with open and disgraceful sin. Let us praise 
God that this is so. But who of us does not know that 
the same seeds of death are in us, which sprung up and 
showed themselves in Peter's denial of his Lord ? Have 
we also learned from our past sins ? Does the time seem 
more than sufficient, wherein we have been less faithful 
than we ought to have been? Oh, let the recollections of 
a life, sincere, it may be, but full of stagnation, full of 
apathy, stimulate us to devote the future to the service of 
Godj to the benefit of man ! Then may we draw some 
good from our past imperfections, and rise far above our 
present level of service and love. 



SERMON XIV. 

FORGETTING THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE BEHIND. 

Philippians iiL parts of verses 12, 13, 14. Not as though I had 
already attained, either were already perfect — hut this one thing I do, 
forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those 
which are before, I press toward the mark, 

It is an exceedingly painful feeling, when we look 
back on life, and have to confess that a great object re- 
mains unaccomplished. Thus, suppose a philosopher to 
have begun his work in all earnestness with the aim to 
explore the recesses of truth. He thought all mysteries 
would unlock their doors to him. Nothing would be un- 
certain. A harmonious system would unite together all 
truth and reconcile all contradictions. But now in his 
old age, after the work of years is ended, he finds difficul- 
ties which no skill of his can penetrate, and mysteries 
which defy him ; there is more darkness even than he 
thought there was, when he first began to speculate ; and 
he comes to the mortifying conclusion, that either he is no 
philosopher, or philosophy has no instruments with wiiich 
it can penetrate into the true essence of things. So, too, 
let a man start on a career of noble endeavor to aid the 
cause of liberty in an oppressed nation. He has devoted 
to it his best thoughts, his time, his money ; he has writ- 
ten, has acted, has suffered ; and now, as his life is in 
its wane, a tyrant fills the throne, the people are no 
wiser or sounder, or fitter for freedom, and he is going to 
die with the conviction that his toils have been spent 
upon the wind. 

The feelings of the Christian,. as he looks back on, his 
path, are like these, only more painful. I [is great life 

197 



198 Forgetting those Things ivhich are Behind. 

work has been or ought to have been, to live for God and 
to become united to God. This end was not beyond the 
measure of his powers, when he considers the helps offered 
to him. The philosopher, perhaps, labors under a mis- 
take in reaching after that which is unattainable, and if 
he fails, need not reproach himself. The advocate of 
freedom did what he could and is not responsible for any- 
thing else. But he is responsible for his distance from 
that perfect standard, which, ever since his initiation into 
the Christian life has shone like a star before him. " Oh, 
what an interval there is, he cries, between what I am 
and what I might have been. Oh ! how many in fewer 
years have put on a heavenly purity, breathe a seraph's 
fire, do work for God which seems almost miraculous, 
while here I lie or creep, dragging these chains that fasten 
me to the earth, unable, save at long intervals, to feel like 
a citizen of Heaven or to have heavenly aspirations." 

This too, is to be observed of the Christian, that as he 
advances in the Christian course, his standard of perfec- 
tion rises, whence what satisfied him once fails to satisfy 
him now. As he put on godliness perhaps the change 
was great, and therefore the attainment seemed to be 
great. Perfection to his unpractised eye, unused to the 
distances and magnitudes of spiritual things, seemed close 
by, as blind men, on recovering sight, think they can take 
hold of the moon. But he walks onward, making fresh 
discoveries all the while of two objects, of himself and of 
the majestic law of Christian duty. His life pleases him 
less, for he sees through outward actions more into his 
soul. His standard rises and rises until nothing but god- 
like perfection is worthy of his aims or hopes. 

Thus when he runs on into mature Christian life, al- 
though he may find nothing exceptionable in his outer man 
and his conduct, he has a burden on his soul which gives 
sometimes intolerable pain. Oh how distressing it is, 
when men, as they look at him, call him perfect, to feel 



Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 199 

that he has, concealed beyond their eyes, within his soul, 
the germs of a multitude of sins, that no constitutional 
propensity is wholly overcome, but the fallen enemy rises 
for new fight as soon as a little sleepiness or self-satisfac- 
tion overtakes him. When thus over-estimated by others, 
he feels sometimes, that to have a reputation so much be- 
yond his deserts is to be a hypocrite, and he wants in all 
honesty to unbosom himself to the world, that they may 
not extol him above his true level. 

This feeling, too, of not having attained, of not being 
already perfect, is a disheartening one. Is the past to be 
the criterion of the future ? Death is a little way on ; 
shall any attainments of any account be made before that 
great door of exit from life be opened ? If not perfect 
now, not masters over our own sinful propensities nor 
thoroughly united to God as yet, shall we ever be ? Oh ! 
must life close when that great life-work is but half done, 
but just begun rather? 

And the impression of sadness at not having attained 
is deepened, when he thinks of ivhat he has done to reach 
perfection. He may have been un watchful, forgetful, 
careless, without earnestness, but he cannot blame himself 
for entire lack of endeavor, or lack of strong desire. He 
has in some sort been fighting against sin for many years, and 
that habitually. But the trouble is that so many struggles 
have been so unprofitable. For the power of thought in 
meditation, the strength of effort in desire, and the use of 
means have been perhaps beyond any that he has given to 
any other subject in the world, perhaps beyond all other 
efforts put together. What has been accomplished ? Oh ! 
it is as if a man were climbing a steep mountain with a 
dead body tied to him ; he stumbles, he falls backwards, 
he rises wounded and weary. There the same body of 
death is forcing him to the same lapses still; and the 
mountain top seemed as far off, if not farther off, than 
when lie set out on the journey. 



200 Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 

And soon he must meet the Great Judge, who, however 
merciful, commands him to be perfect as He is, and ex- 
pects perfection from him. Here is one eye that knows 
all his lapses, all his heart sins, all that which a cloud 
covers from the eyes of men. We men make strange 
work of judging, we solve all sorts of hard scientific prob- 
lems, but we misjudge character, misinterpret motives, 
praising and blaming almost as "if we were throwing dice; 
but there is one, and from Him lies no appeal, who hears 
the silence of the thought, and .measures us with infinitesi- 
mal precision, and admits no excuses ; who cannot swerve 
one hair's breadth from truth. Oh ! what will he say of 
met Can I in His sight have made any attainment in 
Christian virtue ? Could I but hear Him say that I have 
been faithful in a few things, what a divine joy would 
spring up in my soul. But what if He condemns me, 
does not my own partial, blear-eyed heart condemn me 
also? 

But perhaps Paul, when he wrote, " Not as though I 
had attained neither were already perfect," did not feel 
thus. Perhaps as he led no life of compromises with the 
world as I have done, as " the world was crucified to him 
and he unto the world," there was a serenity in his face 
as he looked forward and as he looked backward; 
as he looked from a hill top on the valley he had 
passed and looked towards the bright afternoon sun. 
Could he sympathize with the struggling but often con- 
quered Christian f Can I presume to place myself, if not 
on a level, yet in the same pathway with him? Was 
there any need of further exertion that he might reach 
the crown, or had he it not on his head ? In short, can I 
claim a share in the feelings of such a man ? Is it for me 
he has left the declaration that he had not yet attained, 
and the advice to forget the things that are behind and 
press forward to that which is before ? I cannot doubt 
that it is for me he has written these words, when I read 



Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 201 

his confession that he had something yet to learn concern- 
ing Christ and the power of His resurrection ; when I find 
that he urges on himself the necessity of earnest haste and 
zeal to apprehend and secure these blessings for which he 
was apprehended and enlisted by Christ in his service ; 
and when I find him exhorting all to whom he wrote to 
be together followers of him. Let me then consider what 
he intended by forgetting that which is behind. 

It will be plain, I think, that he did not mean absolute 
forgetfulness, an entire fading out of the mind of all re- 
membrances of past life. How would this be possible, or 
to be desired, if it were possible ? What would then be- 
come of experience, of the motives running over from the 
past to guard and purify the future, of the fountain of 
thankfulness which deep memories supply, or even of faith 
itself resting for its support on past deliverances ? Or are 
sins in the past alone to be forgotten ? How, then, are the 
blessed fruits of holiness to grow out of sorrow for them 
continually ? Will that argument of the Apostle Peter 
ever lose its force : " for the time past of our lives is more 
than sufficient to have wrought the will of the flesh ?" Or 
can the sorrow of having wasted life and lived away from 
God ever be wholly buried up and smothered by time ? 
Nay, will not holiness itself draw sorrow from the remotest 
recollection of sin ? 

It is comparative forgetfulness then, that the Apostle 
means. It must not be our chief religious work to remem- 
ber the past, but to press forward towards something bet- 
ter in the future. And here we may say, 

I. First, that it is not good or healthy for a soul to brood 
over past sin. There is such a thing as disturbing the 
balance between the two parts of repentance, sorrow for 
sin and active obedience. Sorrow for sin is foundation 
work. Should a man be employed all lii? days in laving 
foundations, what could he do besides? It may bo well to 
look down now and then to see dial there arc no Haws or 



202 Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 

cracks in the lower parts of the house, but we must be 
putting story upon story, and finishing the upper cham- 
bers or we shall accomplish nothing. " Therefore, leaving 
the principles of the doctrine of Christ let vm go on unto 
perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance 
from dead works." 

Sorrow for sin too is subordinate work. It has no value 
in itself apart from its necessary action on character. Let 
a man stop there, what has he gained, what has God 
gained ? Is not forgiveness, or as it is called in the Bible, 
God's having our sins no more in remembrance, intended 
to put them in a certain sense out of our remembrance, 
and to aid us in thinking of better things towards which 
forgiveness opens the prospect ? 

And this also deserves to be noticed that brooding over 
past sins has a dangerous influence on character, as might 
be inferred from the fact that it is not what God calls us 
to. In its extreme, when unattended with hope, it 
becomes remorse. Did ever good grow out of remorse, or 
is it not a paralysis of soul, where power over the will is 
lost ? "What can be more deadening and benumbing to 
character than a fixed state of inaction, a sorrow followed 
by no effort to relieve one's self from that which arouses 
the sorrow ? " The sorrow of the world worketh death." 

And when this sorrow is not remorse, but is attended with 
a slight hope of forgiveness, it may be excessive — I do not 
mean out of proportion to our sins, but too great for the 
proper play of the active powers ; in short, as the Apostle 
Paul says, such a penitent is in danger of being "swal- 
lowed up with overmuch sorrow." The whole harmony 
of our nature is disturbed by a tendency to brood over 
the past. In a certain sense it is right to say, — " I cannot 
undo my sins ; regret for them cannot wipe them out ! 
Why then should I give the whole energy of my soul to 
the thought of them ? If I am truly sorry for them that 
is enough. It is better that I should be doing my life- 



Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 203 

work of glorifying God, and serving my generation than 
that I should be increasing the sense of my unworthiness, 
and crowding my mind with poignant regrets. The 
natural course is from a right estimate of sin to sorrow 
for it, from sorrow to the purpose of new obedience. If I 
fail of this last, I fail of whatever is most important, 
and I surely shall fail, if all my religion gathers itself on 
this one point of looking back upon my past life. Sup- 
pose I felt my ignorance as keenly without one exertion 
to remedy it by acquisitions of knowledge ; or brooded 
in despondency over my ill health without the use of diet 
and medicine ; or over any deficiency or inaptitude until 
my mind became full of it to the exclusion of other 
things. Is this a hopeful state of mind? Is there any cure 
in such treatment of our maladies, whether of the mind 
or soul ? No ; better would it be, if possible, to forget all 
my past sin, than thus to remember it, without remembering 
also the Gospel provisions and the Gospel motives for sin- 
ners." 

II. But secondly I must forget the things that are 
behind in this sense also, — that / must not infer ivhat my 
religious life for the future will be from the probabilities of 
the past. 

The doctrine of probabilities is a very good one to go 
upon in worldly matters, wherever a permanent law pre- 
vails, or wherever there are constant reasons in nature or 
in man for exceptions from general laws of God. Only 
ascertain what has happened in the past, and you will 
know what shall happen in the future. Here the rule is — 
remembering " the things that are behind I press forward." 
Only ascertain by careful record how many have died and 
at what age, in a given climate and with a given proficiency 
of medical science, how many houses burn up in the year, 
how many shipwrecks occur, how many persons kill them- 
selves or kill others, and you know what to expect here- 
after, until causes of variation change the probabilities 



204 Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 

of things. You can thus carry on your insurances of 
lives and against wrecks to a profit ; you will be tolerably 
certain that the average temperature, mortality, amount 
of crime, increase of population will be the same next 
year, or for the next ten years, as for the last year or the 
last decade. 

Now suppose that I should adopt this principle of 
judging in regard to the probabilities of my spiritual 
course for the future. I have maturely considered my 
past life, and find just about such an amount of at- 
tainment, little if any progress, the same constitutional 
sins vanquishing me again and again, the same obstruc- 
tions to my spiritual progress rising up here and there all 
along my way, effort scarcely rewarded, and great effort 
succeeded by a natural weariness and unwatchfulness. In 
short, I analyze my character as a chemist would his com- 
pound. I find such a small percentage of the noble metal 
and so much of the worthless earth. Or I judge, as the 
underwriters of an insurance policy, — so many failures, so 
many sins. To-morrow shall be as to-day. That is the 
law of character. No essential improvempnt, at the best a 
slow, fixed advance. My rate is ascertained, and will not 
materially alter until the machine gives way and the 
wheels stop. 

Now I want to ask, if the Apostle Paul had had in his 
mind all the statistics of character and condition that the 
newest tables supply, whether he would have made this 
use of the past? You answer, almost in scorn, No ! by no 
means. And why not ? Is it because character is not true 
to itself, has no principles to rest upon, and rules to work 
by, but flashes out, rocket-like, in random, uncertain va- 
garies? Or is it because there are not sad, disheartening 
probabilities running over from the past into the present, 
and filling the soul with a feeling of exhaustion and of fear 
at the great work lying ahead in life ? Or is it not rather 
because there are factors in the spiritual life, which can 



Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 205 

change the face of things to any extent, and which hide 
from all calculations of the probabfe. Suppose you were 
deliberately to say, that it is not probable that the divine 
Spirit would give you more strength hereafter than now, or 
that He would not lift you up to a holier life, or that 
you should never have any renewals or quickenings, any 
cheering impulses more than you have had in the dull 
desert of the past ? Would you not feel that such an esti- 
mate of spiritual probabilities was all but impious — that 
it was false, because it reduced the agency of the freest of 
all beings to the working of a law ; that it almost denied 
the reality of a spiritual world, whose movements, powers, 
and intentions are wholly aside from finite calculation ? 

Beware then, my brethren, how you remember your 
past life only to throw discouragement over your exertions 
and hopes for the future. Such a habit is destructive of 
faith and of hope ; or rather springs from the want of them 
both. Forget the things that are behind, and firmly be- 
lieve, that it is very possible, yes ! very natural, for you to 
grow faster in goodness in a year, than you have grown in 
ten, or in all your life. Firmly believe that resources, you 
know not how great, are within your reach, that you have 
within yourselves, with God's help, a power of resistance 
to evil, and of growth in good, which has never yet been 
put forth, — believe this ; and you can and may yet see 
days of brightness such as you have always thought im- 
probable. To him who takes spiritual agencies into view, 
progress is natural, sloth and stagnation are unnatural. 
You have been despondent because you have been worldly. 
Keep God in sight, and all things are possible. 

III. Akin to this last remark is another, which deserves 
notice by itself, that ive must not remember the past as our 
standard of action or character. It would be better to for- 
get our whole life, sins and all, than to look back with a 
sense of satisfaction. And here let mo make a distinction. 
A man who is conscious of high purposes running as niaiu 



206 Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 

threads through the web of life may be glad, as he takes 
his reviews of bygone days, that the grace of God has en- 
abled him to live on the whole near to the level of Chris- 
tian principles. He will thus say with Paul, " for our re- 
joicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in 
simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but 
by the grace of God we have had our conversation in this 
world." Was now the Apostle, when he wrote this, satis- 
fied with himself, and content to run along as he had done 
without rising higher? This we cannot impute to him, 
for he would be inconsistent, if such were his feelings, in 
writing, " not as though I had already attained or were 
already made perfect." There must ever be a discontent 
with themselves in the minds of Christians. Until perfec- 
tion is reached in all respects, until all the inner move- 
ments are of the right kind and in the right degree, the 
chasm between actual attainment and the standard will 
seem vast, and the vaster, the higher the aim of the Chris- 
tian. And he may well suspect himself either of declen- 
sion or of something worse, who is content to live as he 
has lived in the past. This discontent is nothing more 
than the soul's judgment against itself of having fallen 
below the life to which God has called it, of having made 
little of its spiritual advantages, of having feebly used its 
spiritual capacities ; and with such a deep-seated sense of 
short-coming there will often be united a desire to be 
transplanted to a better sphere in the hope of escaping 
from sin. 

Hence to forget the past, in the sense of the Apostle, 
and to remember it in order to avoid its evils are one and 
the same thing. If we can feel with Peter " that the time 
past of our lives is more than sufficient to have wrought 
the will of the flesh," if thus we lose sight of it as a stan- 
dard and remember it only as a warning, we shall do what 
Paul says he did. Feeling that we have not attained, and 
carrying in our minds the causes and items of our past 



Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 207 

mistakes, we shall run forward the more diligently and 
earnestly. The farther we get from our past experience. 
— so far as it is one of sin, — the better. The higher we 
can rise above our past selves, the nearer we shall come to 
God. If the world has had an undue hold on me hereto- 
fore — let each one say, — it shall have so much the less 
hold in the future. If I have been distrustful, or covet- 
ous, or have given way to any besetting sin, oh, how much 
I have clogged myself. What a different person I might 
have been in these years since I first set out on my journey 
heavenward ! Oh ! let me now throw the more zeal into 
my efforts to lead a holy life, the more cause I have to be 
dissatisfied with my surveys of the life I have spent. Let 
me feel that I have made really no attainments until I 
have reached my goal. 

IV. And thus we come to what is the Apostle's prin- 
cipal thought, that the soul must be so occupied with the 
future, that the past shall be only subordinate and subsi- 
diary. If I have been in wretchedness all my past exist- 
ence, the fact and the remembrance are of no account, 
except so far as they help me to escape from my misery 
and heighten my enjoyment by contrast. If I have been 
poor, and now the door to wealth is opened, exertion to 
gain it is the main thing, and I may wholly forget my 
poverty, if motives enough from other sources stimulate 
me to action. So if I have been ignorant and am now ad- 
vanced a little way in knowledge, my sense of ignorance 
may urge me on a little, but the boundless expanse of 
knowledge, opening before me, will incite me far more. 
It is better to have the mind filled with what can and 
ought to be done, than to be living in the past, and living 
over the past. " Reaching forth unto those things which 
are before," is the Apostle's motto. The future has in it 
possibilities almost infinite. Two Christians starting alike 
to-day, but pursuing different courses, the one running on 
with his face turned to the past, and the other pressing 



208 Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 

and looking towards the mark, — will be next year, or at 
the end of life, at an immense distance from one another. 
Here is a man who is forever brooding over his sins. 
What strenuous exertions can he make, if he do not rather 
give np the hopes of the Christian life with its joys? Here 
is another, who thinks the future will be as the past, the 
same gloomy record of unexecuted resolutions and unfin- 
ished efforts. If faith in God and hope of success are ne- 
cessary for success, what can such a man do except stag- 
nate in his sins? Here is a third, who thinks that the past 
presents a pretty fair record on which he can dwell without 
dissatisfaction. What will he do more or better than he 
has done ? These are the men that are looking backward. 
But here is one again who has, we will suppose, been sadly 
foiled and disappointed heretofore, who has done very little 
of what he purposed when he began to be a Christian. 
Broken vows, unfinished efforts lie strown all along his 
way. His life seems a failure. Can such a kind of Chris- 
tian he says, enter heaven? But I will not despair, he 
adds, until two things fail, — imtil God who offers the help 
of His Spirit deludes me, and until the object I have to at- 
tain shall seem less momentous than it does now. And so 
he throws himself on the effort to be a better, holier man, 
with a kind of self-abandonment, as the sailor trusts himself 
to the deep. Farewell, land, says he. I must look out at 
the bow, not at the stern, spread all sail, and get across 
this interval between me and my port, or perish. 

Oh, my Christian friends, let us forget all but God and 
Christ, and the great work before us. Let us, by an act of 
resolute, constant will, make all things else of such minor 
importance, that they shall not take up undue room in our 
souls, leaving no space for nobler things. Are we dissat- 
isfied with ourselves ? But with God's help we can be- 
come other men ; we can, I may say, cease to be ourselves, 
eveu as we profess not to be our own. Are we discouraged? 
But "the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth, faintetk 



Forgetting those Things which are Behind. 209 

not, neither is weary. To them that have no might He 
increaseth strength." Is it too hard a work to be an earnest 
Christian? Why did we set out, and why do we not return 
at once to our sins? Is there not a fair prospect of success? 
And if we fail, shall we lose anything by resolute en- 
deavor? Is there not a positive gain to character, in 
heroic, earnest effort, even if we were to grasp a shadow ? 
But what we aim at is not a shadow. It is that for which 
we are apprehended of Christ Jesus. It is the prize 
of the high calling of God. Unless God calls, and 
Christ takes hold of our souls for nothing, we are running 
forward to secure the very thing for which we were made. 
Let us so run that we may obtain. 



SERMON XV. 

SOBEIETY OF MIND URGED ON YOUNG MEN. 

Titus ii. 6. Young men, likewise, exhort to be sober-minded.* 

All Christian goodness is one in its essence, and the 
many forms of virtue, with which it beautifies the charac- 
ter, spring from the same root. It is one sovereign prin- 
ciple for all relations, temperaments, conditions and ages, 
while yet, through the imperfection of human nature, one 
off-shoot may need more tending and vigilance than 
another. The Christian moralist will take both these 
considerations into view ; while he insists on radical Chris- 
tian virtue, in its forms of faith, love or godliness, he 
will not neglect urging men to those derived and particu- 
lar qualities of character, which imply the principle with- 
in, and of necessity flow from it. 

One such quality, or department of godliness, the 
apostle has in view in the text, where he would have 
young men exhorted to be sober-minded. The quality is 
of equal obligation for all periods of life — it is a neces- 
sary outgrowth of the hidden life in all ; and yet, if god- 
liness has sway over the character of the Christian in 
advanced life, sobriety of mind will have become deep- 
seated in him almost of course, while on the other hand, 
the youthful Christian is peculiarly exposed to danger 
just at this point, and a failure here, would obstruct his 
course through life, if not prove fatal to the existence of 
piety. 

But the reasons for exhorting young men to this virtue 
will be made more apparent in the sequel : at present we 

* A Baccalaureate sermon preached in 1858. 

210 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 211 

propose to ask what the sobriety of mind is which the 
Apostle Paul directs Titus to enforce upon Christian 
youth ? What is it especially as a Christian virtue, grow- 
ing out of the realities disclosed by the Gospel? How 
does it differ from native phlegm and caution ? Is it akin 
to prudential abstinence from whatever will damage our 
earthly interests, or has it a solider foundation and a 
higher aim ? How does it differ from the virtue of simi- 
lar name cultivated by philosophic discipline? What 
are the leading motives by which it should be enforced ? 
Such questions I shall attempt to answer, in the hope that 
distinct views of the nature of this quality may be of use, 
and especially that the class, which will assemble for the 
last time in this house of worship, may carry something 
away with them, which may help them in the scenes of an 
untried world. 

The term sobriety of mind, according to its original im- 
port, denoted a negation— -the absence of intoxication. 
From this more sensual starting point it proceeded to 
denote the removal of all such exciting influences as tend 
to blind and bewilder the mind, to weaken the power of 
judgment, to bring our nature under the dominion of 
passions which plead for immediate gratification. It was 
felt to be a small thing if a man could control the love for 
strong drink ; the mind could become stupefied and 
deranged by the force of more spiritual causes — imagina- 
tions and desires above the senses — and could lose the 
mastery over itself as completely as if it had suffered an 
intoxication. Thus sobriety of mind came to mean moral 
soundness or health, the dominion of reason over desire. 

The word in our text, strictly translated, means " sound- 
minded," or healthy-minded, and implies the conviction 
that there is a certain standard of character, or condition 
of the mind which bears an analogy to health of body, a 
condition in which all the functions of the mind are in 
their right state, iu which sound or healthy views of things 



212 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 

are taken, in which no part of human nature is either 
inoperative or unduly developed. In this large sense, 
soundness of mind may serve as a description of the har- 
mony or regular action implied in virtue ; but inasmuch 
as the passions and desires, excited by objects which have 
strong influence over us in our present state of being, 
more than anything else destroy sanity of mind, the term 
is usually confined to the control over worldly desires, 
and to views of life which commend themselves to right 
reason. Thus, soundness of mind includes self-restraint 
and temperance, the former of which is the power of 
governing the passions, and the other the habit of using 
all pleasures without going to excess. But soundness or 
sobriety of mind is more radical than either of these, for it 
includes those just views of life, that appreciation of the 
value of enjoyment and of the world compared with duty 
and the higher life of the soul, without the sway of which 
in the soul it can neither exercise continence nor self-con- 
trol, nor temperance. Soundness or sobriety of mind, 
also, is far from stopping at the boundaries of the passions, 
especially the sensual ; all the desires, even those which 
have little to do with the body, as the desire of fame, of 
power, of superiority, and the desire of wealth — the means 
of gratifying all other desires — are placed under its con- 
trol. 

1. As thus understood, sobriety of mind is to be distin- 
guished, we remark first, from a native sluggishness or 
cautiousness tuhich may conspire with it to prevent excess. 
It is not, in its true idea, of a physical nature. Some men 
are born with more of the animal, others with more of the 
spiritual about them. Some are constitutionally impetu- 
ous and unreflecting; others are cool and thoughtful. 
Some are unsuspicious, others descry danger afar off. 
Some, by the force of imagination, dress up enjoyment to 
themselves in gala robes, and have the power of kindling 
up desire by beautifying and magnifying the object out of 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 213 

which it is drawn ; others are matter of fact persons who 
have no skill to throw halos around things either good or 
bad. Some again learn quick from the experience of 
evil ; others, either because they are hopeful or because 
they forget past impressions, yield to the solicitations of 
desire, until a habit of being overcome, and a sense of 
moral weakness root out the very thought of resistance. 

The mind which possesses a constitutional sobriety, de- 
rived from sources such as we have named, may steer its 
way safely through many of the perils of life, and, per- 
haps, when exposed to particular temptations, may con- 
quer by insensibility, where weak Christian principle, 
united with strong propensity, might be overcome. It 
may be well to have a nature in which there is no master 
passion, or if that cannot be, to have one where the calcu- 
lation of consequences is a wakeful foe of excess. But 
this native temperament is, of course, not the sobriety of 
mind to which the Apostle exhorts, since it is not volun- 
tarily assumed, nor easily shaken off. Nor can such a 
nature go far in the way of moral discipline ; if it keeps 
out vice, it keeps out virtue. It cannot, therefore, by 
victories over faults, promote the great ends of a life of 
trial in this world. At the best, such a cold, cautious 
nature is the negation of evil ; no interesting or lofty 
character ever grew upon such a stock. If a man, for 
instance, can never become angry, he may be saved from 
many foolish and sinful acts, but it is many times better 
to have a power of subduing anger, which you have ac- 
quired by exertions which ha\ 9 cost you something, than 
to be a stone. 

Moreover, if such native sobriety of mind exists, it is 
rare. There is generally some weak spot, where passion 
can with success approach men who seem like icicles. 
What class of persons is more thoroughly worldly than 
many who are proof against the allurements of vice, but 
speculate with the gambler's intense excitement, or burn 



214 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 

with a devouring lust for power. Perhaps the greatest 
insobriety of mind belongs to those who, in most respects, 
have an entire mastery over themselves, — who view the 
world on many of its sides as it is, but concentrate all 
their forces on one object, with an untiring restless fever 
of soul, which the votary of pleasure seldom knows. 

2. A seeond thought suggests itself here, that the Apostle's 
sober-mindedness is not to be confounded with that self-con- 
trol ivhich springs from worldly prudence and shrewd calcu- 
lations of success in life. There are men who live exclu- 
sively for earthly enjoyment, who yet have attained to a 
mastery over their own lusts. They know what the laws 
of health will allow, what the body will bear, how far 
they may go in pleasure consistently with prudence and 
economy, what degree of restraint is demanded to pre- 
serve their reputation. They will, therefore, keep them- 
selves sober while their less discreet, and perhaps less cor- 
rupt, companions are intoxicated at their side ; they live a 
long healthy life, while others die of the effects of vicious 
indulgence, and retain their good name while others ruin 
themselves in the opinion of society. Verily, they have 
their reward ; but their sober-mindedness is certainly no 
such virtue that even a philosopher could commend it. 

Another illustration to the same effect is afforded by 
the money-making spirit. (Jovetousness is a passion 
which puts on a grave aspect, subdues the soul into re- 
gularity, methodizes time, prevents extravagance, leaves 
no vacant room for sensuality, and, like the nobler aims 
of our nature, looks far beyond the present moment. You 
would call a man, therefore, who is domineered over by 
covetousness, a sober-minded man ; and, indeed, many of 
his feelings and opinions are on the side of good order 
and the well-being of society. It is a vice into which 
sober Pharisees are apt to fall. An avaricious man is 
often quite religious ; he goes to church ; he pays for a 
pew ; he believes in conversion — perhaps, he thinks 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 215 

himself converted. Is he now deserving of the name 
" sober-minded," or " sound-minded ?" Look into his soul, 
which is full of excited hopes, of speculative projects, of 
feverish anxieties ; look at his mercantile morality, which 
permits false commendations of what he has to sell, unfair 
advantages in a bargain, jealousies and misrepresentations 
of a competitor, and say whether such a man is sober, or 
even sane? 

Another form still of insobriety of mind, under the 
garb of gravity and decorum, is exceedingly common in 
this country ; it is found in the political aspirant. A 
little knowledge of men convinces such a person that in 
order to succeed in his chosen life, he must gain confidence 
by the appearance of honesty and morality, but cannot 
gain office without suppressing his feelings and sacrificing 
his principles, on occasions when his interests demand it. 
Accordingly he gives an external adherence to the laws 
of morality by which society is governed, and professes to 
hold Christianity in respect. He bridles his temper, 
because to yield to anger in the conflicts of party would 
place him at a disadvantage. . He controls his appetites, 
if he finds that self-indulgence will take confidence away 
from him. In short, he is consummately prudent, but 
within he is full of hatred, anxieties, cravings, discontents, 
which, if they could be seen, would show how far he is 
from a sound mind. 

These illustrations bring us to the conclusion that pru- 
dence, as it is generally understood, is a low principle of 
action. Being nothing more than enlightened selfishness, 
it does not deserve the name of a virtue. It may be the 
helmsman to steer the baldest and meanest worldliness to 
its destined point, just as it may assist weak virtue by its 
timely suggestions. It is often found in opposition to the 
noblest impulses which man can feel. It would have 
been, doubtless, very imprudent for the young man in the 
Gospel to sell all and follow Christ, very imprudent to 



216 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men, 

declare one's self as Cbristian and be burnt at the stake 
for it, very imprudent to avow your honest convictions 
and lose the good will or custom of society. In these 
cases, as the servant of fear, it opposes conscience honor 
and religious principle ; in other cases, as the servant of 
an earthly mind, it may oppose faith in eternal realities. 
Sobriety of mind, then, is not learned by habits of mere 
prudence, nor is the character in which it prevails of 
course open to right impressions, nor is it a very great 
gain, if we look at the highest interests of the soul, to 
exhort young men to be prudent and there to stop. The 
Pharisees were more prudent and calculating than the 
publicans, but they shut their ears to Christ. And at 
this day, we find the worldliest persons, however used to 
prudence and self-control, the least capable of anything 
lofty or noble. 

3. Sobriety of mind, being something more than a tem- 
perament averse to excess, something more than self-con- 
trol on selfish principles, may be looked at as a philoso- 
phical, or as a Christian virtue. In both cases, it is a 
subordination of the desires and passions to the higher 
principles of the soul ; in both, it is a spontaneous self- 
government according to the rules of right living, not 
according to calculations of temporal advancement. All 
philosophy has assigned to this virtue of sophrosune, as 
the Greeks, or temperantia as the Latins called it, a very 
prominent place. It is one of Plato's four generic virtues, 
and sometimes he assigns to it so wide a range as to 
include his cardinal virtue of justice. Nay, in the matter 
of desire, philosophers have gone beyond this point of 
self-restraint, on the theory that desire in its own nature 
is evil, and the root of all evil. They have taught that 
perfection can be reached only by extinguishing desire, 
by waging war with every bodily appetite and every affec- 
tion. Thus they have substituted abstinence for temper- 
ance, annihilation of desire for moderation, apathy foi 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 217 

self-control ; but they have also made virtue impossible 
for the mass of men, and introduced into the world an 
asceticism which bore the fruit of moroseness or of 
spiritual pride. 

But where philosophy has kept near to the true idea of 
sobriety of mind, it has wanted authority and motive. It 
has found its arguments for the virtue in the beauty of the 
virtue itself, apart from the will of God, and from the so- 
bering influences of the doctrine of eternal life. By not 
teaching that man in himself is weak through sin, and 
that he can obtain help from on high, it has lost sight of 
the greatest encouragement to perseverance, and the surest 
preventive of despair. By treating the virtues as if they 
were separate plants, instead of growths from one com- 
mon principle, it has scattered men's efforts to improve 
themselves, and directed their attention to the stream 
rather than the fountain. Finally, it had not truth 
enough in its hands to work any radical change in hu- 
man character : God, a positive law, the great issues of 
conduct, were hid from its eyes, and only such truth re- 
mained, for the discipline of natures prone to excess, as 
might be picked up along the path of experience, or 
derived from the doctrine of the beautiful and the good. 

When we speak of Christian sobriety of mind, we mean 
nothing generically different from the notion which philos- 
ophy had already formed. But we mean sobriety of mind 
sustained by Christian principles, enforced by Christian 
motives, and dwelling amid other manifestations of a 
Christian or purified character. Let us consider it when 
thus broadly understood, in some of its most prominent 
characteristics. 

1. First, it involves an estimate of earthly pleasure and 
good formed under the power of faith. 

The first feeling of a noble soul, after discovering the 
doctrine of immortal life, might be conceived to be an in- 
tense disgust with everything earthly. So small a sphere 



218 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 

for such a being ! Such prison walls for a freeman with 
godlike properties and duration ! Such food of the petti- 
est earthly trifles instead of ambrosial meats! Why 
should I not enter the great temple at once, instead of 
w T andering listlessly about the gates? Why not imitate 
the philosophic youth of old, who threw himself from the 
rock, in order to reach his soul's higher existence by a 
short road? 

But no ! says the Gospel. Life cannot be disgusting to 
the wise man, nor is it filled with trifles, for everything in 
it connects itself with eternity. It is the school for the 
formation of unalterable character, the starting point in a 
course of endless good or evil, the first act of a drama of 
the profoundest meaning. Its little duties and trials are 
contrived with a view to vast results : they look forward to 
the attainment of angelic excellence. These desires which 
stir within you, and bring you into necessary relations to 
this present life, give also to this life much of its deep im- 
port, for on your treatment of them depends your everlast- 
ing welfare. The question in regard to them is, whether 
they shall reign or serve ; whether they shall dazzle the 
soul, or whether the light of God, giving every object and 
each word its due importance, shall be perceived ; whether, 
in view of the great issues of conduct, you will quit your- 
self like a man, keeping body and soul in subjection to 
righteousness, or lose the thought that you have any eter- 
nal interests to secure. You ought then to feel your im- 
mortality in every limb and every faculty, to move about 
as a creature of the skies which has shed its wings for a 
season, to carry into every plan and action a consciousness 
of your destiny. 

The doctrine of a future life does not tend to calm and 
subdue the desires only by the fear of the consequences of 
excess, and the hope of the rewards of virtue, but it serves 
also as a measure of the immense value of virtue and the 
immense evil of sin. If the soul capable of stretching its 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 219 

thoughts into eternity and of loving like God were to die 
with the body, of what great importance would virtue be ? 
Would not God, if moral quality were the highest of 
things in his regard, give it a duration reaching beyond 
half a century? Do we not judge of the value of other 
things in part by their permanence ? So men must rea- 
son ; and, on the other hand, in the immortal life which 
God has assigned to the soul, they must find a proof how 
He reckons the value of character, and a motive to subju- 
gate the desires. It now becomes a more serious question 
how I shall live : virtue and vice have put on new dimen- 
sions, and grown to a gigantic size. Let us eat and drink, 
for to-morrow we die, says the unbeliever. Let us culti- 
vate our undying powers, and feed with heavenly food that 
which is to last forever, says the Christian. To the one, 
the gratification of worldly desire is the essence and end 
of life ; to the view of the other, they who live in pleasure 
are dead while they live, and there is no true life which 
does not take hold of immortality. 

Aud, again, faith in the God of revelation and in Christ 
produces sobriety of mind, by exalting the standard of 
excellence. In the Scriptures the mind is brought into 
intimacy with objects most remote from excited desire; 
spiritual things are so opposite to sensual, that even a 
feeble conception of God's holiness tends to allay anger, 
quench lust, and bring a momentary calm into the soul 
even of the worst of men. Were there no exj)ress code of 
morals, the soul familiar with God would dread and 
shrink from inordinate desire by a moral instinct, for his 
character speaks with the force of law. So, too, God in 
human flesh, living amid these same lusts which corrupt 
mankind, and overcoming them, has brought a new 
standard into this world. What an infinite distance be- 
tween His calm look at both worlds, His superiority to 
desires even the most innocent, and the feverish thirst, 
the intense longings for momentary good of earthly minds. 



220 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 

With His advent into the world, a new idea of life began, 
and the victory of the spirit over the flesh is rendered 
possible. 

2. But it is not enough to have a standard of cha- 
racter; the young man, if he would be sober-minded, must 
have rules of living calculated beforehand to resist the 
allurements of the world when they arise. In some 
branches of morality, it may. be most advisable to act 
without definite rules, making the inner spirit the guide 
of conduct. Nor will rules in any department of ethics, 
without such a central regulator, even if observed, fail of 
being followed by undue self-confidence, and thus of pre- 
paring the way for their own violation. But rules are 
especially needed to keep the soul in due sobriety, because 
the excited desires sweep in sudden gusts over the soul, 
prostrating reason, conscience, and even prudence before 
them. If a liability to such bursts of desire is allowed, 
the habit must ensue of giving way to them ; thus two 
evil habits, that of inordinate desire or passion, and that 
of giving up self-control, support one another, and grow 
together. The rule or maxim at such times may be that 
on which the mind may fall back. It is a kind of fortress 
reared by the wisdom and thoughtfulness of the past, to 
which the assaulted soul may retire until it has recruited 
its strength for the battle. 

It is the part of Christian ethics to make known what 
rules are needed for our moral guidance, and to enforce 
them by the appropriate motives. In this place, no such 
thiDg can be attempted, and yet I cannot pass on without 
calling your attention to one or two parts of conduct, 
where it is peculiarly important to have well settled prin- 
ciples of action. 

In regard to the bodily appetites, Christian sobriety be- 
gins to be lost as soon as they are made ends in themselves, 
without regard to something higher. Here, then, if any 
where, we must begin to put forth a self-denying will. An 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 221 

appetite within its sphere, subordinate to the great purpose 
for which it was implanted, as that of hunger for the sup- 
port of the body, has no kind of evil influence on the 
spiritual nature, Out of that sphere it becomes a ferocious 
tyrant, — one that not only enslaves the soul, but destroys 
the power of recovery. 

The question of abstinence, or moderate use, apart from 
its bearings on others^ and where gratification is innocent, 
is a question to be determined by individual strength. To 
abstain from things innocent, is a confession of weakness. 
Yet such a confession is better than presumptuous self-trust 
and indulgence after you are overcome. 

In regard to amusements and diversions, sobriety consists 
in keeping them in their place, as recreations after bodily 
and mental toil. They must not then usurp the rights of 
labor, unless we are resolved to destroy the earnestness and 
seriousness of character, which grows out of a conviction 
that life is full of meaning. The insane love of amusement 
is even more despicable than the insane gratification of the 
appetites. We see natures of very high capacity enthralled 
by sensuality, who have glimpses of a better life, and strug- 
gle hard at times to fulfill the ends for which an immor- 
tal soul was given them. But the thorough votary of 
amusement is a mere earth-worm, without aspirations, and 
without powers to rise into the air. 

The sober Christian is taught by the precepts of the 
New Testament to beware especially of covetousness. The 
love of gain is one of the most dangerous of the desires, 
on account of its expressing itself in the soberest acts 
of an industrious life, and on account of its comprehen- 
siveness. As money stands for every commodity, so 
covetousness steps in front of every desire, acting now 
as the representative of the love of pleasure, now of 
the necessary wants of life, and now even of real or 
counterfeit benevolence. A desire so wide-sweeping is as 
widely dangerous. The Christian, as he looks abroad over 



222 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 

life, beholds here the cause of shipwrecks of character, of 
damaged fortunes, of ruined hopes. It defeats its own ends 
by running out into wild speculation. It is, as we have 
said before, a sad, staid, sober passion, and seems to those 
who admit it into their hearts to be allied to all the virtues 
of society, but it is, for all that, a fire that consumes the 
sout with burning cares, it magnifies the world, and absorbs 
all the thoughts. To no man is eternity so far off as to the 
covetous man. No worldling is more justly called an 
idolater. 

The sober Christian, then, will not aim and bend the 
efforts of his life to be rich. He cannot do this, for the 
love of riches is a brief term for the love of earthly objects, 
it is worldly-mindedness condensed. If in the course of 
his honest industry, or by some other act of Divine Provi- 
dence, riches come into his hands, they are his to use under 
a sense of his increased responsibility. The probability is 
that he will have more of them, the certainty is that he 
will use them better than if he had spent the energies of 
his soul on the desire of accumulation.* 

The love of political distinction and popular favor easily 
runs, in our country, into an absorbing passion, which in 
its course we see overflowing honesty, truthfulness and all 
moral principle. How can a serious man consent to 
hazard his character and his soul in such a pursuit? He 
cannot seek office for its own sake, nor expose himself to 
those temptations which he sees ruining so many men of 
aspiring minds throughout the country. His only ques- 
tion will be, whether he may hold it when it is offered to 
him without his seeking ; whether the depraving influences 
of public life are not too great to expose himself to such a 
snare. 

3. Need I add that rules must be followed by a settled 
purpose, by a resolution formed in the view of spiritual 
and divine truth to adopt such a course of life as sobriety 
of mind requires. The purpose must be rigorous, admit- 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 223 

ting no compromises nor exceptions, nor giving way when 
a great opportunity offers, as when some vast speculation 
would gather treasures for a whole life. It must be thus 
a settled purpose, on which temporary excitements shall 
beat without effect. We see in this country of ours too 
many fitful Christians, who are burning a large part of 
the time with the intensest craving for wealth, and deny 
to their souls all food of heavenly meditation. From this 
fever they are recovered by a temporary religious awaken- 
ing, only to relapse again after a few months. Whether 
they are Christians at all we may not judge, but certainly 
they are far from the sobriety of mind with which Chris- 
tianity endows the soul. 

Such are some of the requisites for maintaining sobriety 
of mind : that a standard of life and thought be formed 
under the influence of spiritual things, that rules of con- 
duct be provided to assist the soul amid the assaults of 
tempestuous desire, and that an earnest purpose of living 
according to the law of the Gospel engage on the side of 
Christian sobriety all the effective force of the will. 

4. And if this essentially Christian duty of sobriety of 
mind is binding on all, it needs to be pressed ivith especial 
earnestness on young men, who are apt to fail just at this 
point. Without the lessons of experience, impulsive and 
incautious, proverbially hopeful, often dazzled by the 
colors which their own imaginations throw around the 
objects of pursuit, who need so much as they a voice of 
counsel and of solemn warning, drawn from the eternal 
issues of conduct ? Who need so much to be led away in 
thought from time, in which they are just beginning to be 
actors, and to be instructed to measure things by a 
divinely furnished rule of judgment? Their minds 
naturally, and by a divine appointment, take hold of life 
with a strong zest ; and earthly desires are at their side, 
urging them, according to the design of their existence, to 
the fuliillnieiU of earthly duties, and yet able to draw 



224 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 

them away into every excess. Feeling is exuberant, 
temper quick, passsion strong ; the evil of indulgence is 
unknown, or lies afar off and may not be guarded against; 
restraint has not become habitual. Let all go on in an 
unchecked progress, let there be no light from the skies to 
reveal higher duties and a nobler life, and what preserva- 
tive is there against the mad sweep of sensual passions, 
if the temperament lead that way, or against the insane 
thirst for gold or office ? 

How precious then, ought that fountain to be regarded 
from which sobering draughts may be continually drawn, 
which tells us of a blessed life, that is passed in calm- 
ness where no gusts of passion invade, and is to be 
measured, not by outbursts of wild joy, but by the depth 
of an inward peace ; which tells us of a holy life, whose 
communings with an Infinite Father and a Divine Saviour 
curb, as by a wand of magic, every lust, and bring the 
soul into harmony ; which tells us of a noble life full of 
great purposes, the least of which is worth more to the 
soul than all that pleasure ever promised ; which tells us 
of a life looking out beyond the grave, and in its measure- 
ments finding all objects bounded by this world to be ineffa- 
bly small, all lusts which make us earthly to be our chief 
enemies. Oh ! my friends, come to that fountain ; wait 
not for the experiences of the bitter, to teach you the 
sweet ; wait not to be taught prudence by the necessity of 
choosing between two master passions, one of which burns 
and the other freezes the soul, but learn wisdom here and 
take it with you into life. 

To exhort young men to be sober-minded is also a hopeful 
task, however much the levity and thoughtlessness of youth 
may seem to make it a difficult one. They have, unless 
some premature corruption has gathered its black cloud 
over them, a readiness to receive impressions from moral 
beauty and harmony ; they have an unworldly character ; 
their earthliness having as yet taken the form of particu- 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 225 

lar acts of exuberant feeling or of boiling passion, rather 
than that of fixed, downward-looking purposes. A young 
man, when won over to habits of sober-minded piety, has 
it in his power to cultivate a rounded, harmonious, beauti- 
ful life, which grows serener and calmer to its end. When 
the hoary victim of passion, the worn-out slave of covet- 
ousness, or the profligate, false-hearted politician, seeks the 
consolations of religion in old age, after he has lost the 
relish and the benefit of his sins, religion welcomes him 
indeed, useless as he may be to her. But her discipline of 
him is that of the hospital, where his maimed and shat- 
tered character can be nursed through the remaining frag- 
ment of life. But in the man who has taken on him, 
when young, the habits of Christian sobriety, we see the 
heavenly life engrafted on the stock of fresh character, and 
so penetrating it, that all his conduct seems to be the easy 
flow of an uninjured nature. 

And if such a young man reaches the boundaries of old 
age, what a blessed sight is he. The fire of anger, which 
he has controlled through life, plays only in a genial flame 
of indignation against sin. Those baser appetites, which 
cost him perhaps many a struggle to overcome, have died 
out of his character. Covetousness, as it never filled him 
with evil cravings in his manhood, so has no torment of 
miserly fears for his old age. His brow of peace tells of 
numberless triumphs over sin, followed by undisturbed re- 
pose. Such an old age of dignity and peace, when we 
see it among us, is a purifying power in society, — it is a 
protest against exaggerated feelings and excited desires, it 
is a forerunner of heavenly rest. Compare it, in its tran- 
quility and noiseless movement, with the disappointment, 
the self-reproach, the weariness and emptiness of a world- 
ling, who feels the bitter penal sobering of life in its dregs, 
and see in it the beauty of the gospel. 

It deserves also to bo noticed that from habits of Chris- 
tian sobriety a young man finds a moral lade springing up 
10* 



226 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 

within him, which is both a beautifier and a conservator 
of character. To him, accustomed to the quiet workings 
of a soul obedient to supreme order, all lawless movement, 
outbursts of passion, fitful displays of force, whatever in 
the soul " suffers the nature of an insurrection," is a mark 
of disease and weakness. Greatness he symbolizes not by 
the vexed sea-surface, but by the profound still depths of 
ocean, not by the volcano, but by the mountain resting on 
its everlasting base, not by the super-human force of the 
maniac, but by energy of will controlled by reason. With 
such a taste he passes judgment on character, on literature 
and art ; he is oifended by agitations, convulsive efforts, 
action or feeling beyond the occasion. He is attracted by 
quiet unobtrusive manners and by natures which hold in 
reserve a part of their power. In religion he looks for 
action without noise, and feeling, ever gushing forth, but 
ever under control. Thus does religion, by subduing the 
fever of worldly desire, refine his judgment, and raise his 
style of feeling. Without knowing it, he has gained an 
instinct of moral propriety, which is one of the fairest blos- 
soms of a religious life. 

Such are some of the reasons for exhorting young men 
to be sober-minded. But besides these general considera- 
tions, there is one to be drawn from the opposite tendency 
of our times and country. (JThe spirit of the times shows a 
preponderance of the subjective in all departments of 
thinking and acting. Feeling has become more intense, 
action more hurried, whether in religion, politics, or 
ordinary life. But in our country, there are reasons why 
there should be more of this spirit than in the rest of the 
world. By our temperament we are rendered rapid and 
eager. In action we are unfettered, and desire finds 
objects to attract it on every side. Our great prosperity 
and success add force to courage and zeal ; we are hope- 
ful, incautious and speculative. Freedom of intercourse, 
and diffusion of knowledge, circulate feeling with electric 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 227 

speed ; we move in masses, and intensify each other's 
feeling by sympathy. We spend heedlessly on pleasure, 
because we feel no great need of laying up for the future. 
Material comforts are greatly enlarged without a due 
advance of intellectual improvement. The great energies 
of the nation are directed to that which is present and 
outward; we are unreflecting, like children. Intensely 
anxious to obtain present results, we cannot wait and let 
the future ripen our labors. And so pleasure bursts forth 
into enormous excesses, covetousness runs into the wildest 
speculations ; contentment, calmness, unambitiousness, are 
rare virtues. A spirit like this ends in the most intense 
worldliness, which would be our speedy ruin, did not 
disasters continually call us back to reflection, and did 
not religion interfere to save us. How peculiarly great 
the need of watchfulness and self-restraint within, where 
all is thus in a constant agitation without us. How can 
we stand our ground against the prevalent sin of* exorbi- 
tant desire, with no unusual effort to keep our hearts near 
to God and eternal things ? Does it not become us pre- 
eminently to cultivate each for himself, that true indepen- 
dence of character which follows God's judgment of 
things in opposition to man's, so that, when the flood of 
popular thinking rushes by us, we may stand upright and 
unshaken in our place ? 

Beloved Pupils, Candidates for the Degree of 

Bachelor of Arts : — 

The lesson of this discourse, which I hope to leave on 
your memory, is, that there is a sobriety of mind, far 
unlike a dispassionate temperament and the self-discipline 
of worldly prudence, which is built on Christian faith in 
things invisible, — God and Christ, and a future life — and 
which consists in subjugating the passions and desires to 
the law of reason enlightened by religion. To such a so- 
briety — the mind's true health and peace— I invite you 



228 Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 

this day. I exhort you, as you leave these scenes for a 
world of excitements, to resolve before God, that you will 
carry the realities of spiritual life in your minds, wherever 
your pilgrimage through this world may lie, — into busi- 
ness, into study, into office, if that should be laid upon 
you; that. you will not rush into the absorbing pursuits of 
the world as if they were your life, but with the eye of 
meditative faith will keep in view the higher life beyond. 
Nor do I alone, following the directions of the Scriptures, 
exhort you to sobriety of mind. The same lesson is urged 
on you from every quarter. There are voices of provi- 
dence which urge to it. Within a few months you have 
witnessed one of the most wide-spread commercial disasters 
that have visited this country, the cause of which, in the 
main, was an eager, excited, insane desire of wealth, lead- 
ing to over-trading, speculation, fraud, and the bank- 
ruptcy of multitudes, innocent as well as guilty. How 
empty after such a crisis does the soul appear that has 
staked all its happiness on the world, while the sober- 
minded man of moderate desires lives through the storm 
in blessed peace. Voices too from the dead enforce 
the same lesson. More than one classmate is crying to 
you from the world of spirits that a life of earthly desires 
ends in the dark, while a life of faith brightens into the 
perfect day of God. Within one short w T eek a new voice 
has reached you from the waters, that overwhelmed one 
once belonging to your number. " So live each day," it 
cries, " that a sudden death shall not come upon you like 
a thief, and remember that death is ever sudden to him 
w r ho has not shaken off his sins." Voices too of the Di- 
vine Spirit have added their persuasives to the calls of 
Providence. You have completed a year which is memo- 
rable in our collegiate history. At its beginning, several 
of you in calmness and thoughtfulness listened to thfc in- 
vitations of heavenly truth, and before it closed, numbers 
more, with many of your fellow-students, gave evidence of 



Sobriety of mind urged on Young Men. 229 

altered lives and new hopes. The same movement you 
have watched in its progress, generally without noise or 
agitation, through the land: great multitudes you have 
seen discovering that a treasure h\ heaven is better than 
wealth, and submitting their souis to tne sobering, enlight- 
ening power of the GospeL 

With such voices urging you to a life of religious so- 
briety, you are going forth into a fascinating world. I do 
not overstate its dangers when I say, that no man, be he 
Christian or not, can go through the world safely unless 
he guards his heart against inordinate loves, and with firm 
purpose shuts his ear to the suggestions of evil. How will 
you stand in the day of hazard, and how will the dread 
balance be at last — for you, or against you ? Oh ! that 
grace may be given you to act wisely and thoughtfully. 
Then, as each one reaches his earthly goal, and launches 
away into the untrodden life of the Spirit, you may meet 
again in heavenly places, to keep up a virtuous fellowship 
forever. God grant that this may be so. — Farewell. 



SERMON XVI. 

TIME PAST, PRESENT, AND TO COME. 

Psalms lxxvii. 11. I will remember the works of the Lord. 
Psalms xxxix. 4. Blake me to know mine end, and the meas- 
ure of my days. 

I have put these two passages of Scripture together, 
as introductory to some thoughts on the relations of 
man's soul to the past and the future. We are so made 
that we live between an unalterable past and an un- 
certain future, with no time in our possession except 
that changing line which we call the present. Every 
present, as we live on, becomes a past ; and so we are 
drawing continually on the future ; we are carrying it 
over to the past in the great account-book of our exist- 
ence, until the future of this world all becomes a past ; 
and we enter the future of eternity. In this respect 
although man is made in God's image, how unlike is he 
to his Great Maker. God has no days, nor measure of 
days, but His existence is one day without morning and 
evening. He is called the Ancient of Days, but the 
name itself, grand as it is, speaks to the narrow concep- 
tions of human minds. We are so limited in our 
powers that we have to take place in the present, and 
think of a past without beginning and of a future with- 
out end. God has already lived through the future ; He 
will, in what we call the future, live through the past. 
He inhabiteth Eternity. Or, as a heathen poet sublimely 
expresses it, " Through a time that never grows old He 
dwells, as Lord in the glittering brightness of Heaven." 

Time in its three stages clings to our very nature and 
colors all our conceptions. We try to conceive of God 

230 



Time Past, Present, and to Come. 231 

in an absolutely eternal Now, but that is too much for 
us. Time itself, also, seems to us to be a power, a some- 
thing that has life and force in it, when it is nothing to 
us apart from the series of events that make up our 
lives ; nothing but a condition of our thought. What is 
time to the forgetful animal, or to a mind that neither 
looks forward nor backward ? But to a finite soul, born 
yesterday to die to morrow, time is everything ; and 
you may say that in proportion to the nobleness of a 
soul will be the value it sets on time. 

Compare time with space. Space is nothing but a re- 
ceptacle to hold material objects, and a room for their 
activity. It is wholly outside of souls. A man shut up 
in a chamber ten feet square may fill the world with 
good thoughts and great plans. But a bird flies across 
a continent and no trace is left. What has space to do 
with character ? What has time not to do with charac- 
ter? 

1. Considering man as having a deep concern with 
time, we notice, first, that memory extends our existence 
backward. This is the closest analogy in man's nature 
to Gods. He can reach far beyond the present moment 
into the past. He can know now what happened to him 
long since, and by the aid of faith in other memories 
he can look, as with a telescope, into primeval ages. It 
is the grandest contribution of some of the sciences that 
they do more than this — that they reveal to our thought 
the state of things as it was when God had not made 
the earth, nor tho fields, nor the highest part of the 
dust of the world. (Proverbs viii. 26.) And when God 
tells us that in the beginning — that is, when time and 
events began — He made the heavens and tho earth, is it 
not a noble power for man to be able to go in thought 
to the very edge of existence, and look into the gulf be- 
fore days and years were born ; to listen, if I may so 
say, to the tumultuous waves of chaos V 



232 Time Past, Present, and to Come. 

Memory lias far more materials to work upon than 
belong to anticipation or foresight of the future. It is 
the treasure-house of our experience, and of the experi- 
ence of mankind. Prediction, indeed, is possible by the 
help of what the past has afforded us, although the 
time that the present order of things shall last cannot 
be predicted. But within the region of human affairs, 
the future is often dark ; and attempts to prophesy, 
without inspiration, are mere guesses. What king in 
Europe had any apprehension, two years before the 
French Revolution, of that great overturning ; or that 
such a scourge as Napoleon would appear in this world ? 
lie who says, " To-morrow shall be as this day, and much 
more abundant," is a fool. That very future, which in- 
cludes all our interests, is hid by a veil that we cannot 
penetrate. If we had lived ages of agony we should re- 
member them, but to foretaste a joy of a distant day is 
generally too much for us. As we look back, with the 
aid of history, the world seems alive ; it belongs to our 
minds. As we look forward, the future is full of mysteries 
and clouds ; it belongs to eternity. Hence the expres- 
sion in the Scriptures, " yesterday, to-day, and, forever " 
— not yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow — as if forever be- 
gan when to-day ended. Memory is a most wonderful 
aud most important faculty, in that it is the medium by 
which the entire past bears on our conduct, feelings, 
hopes, through the whole future ; by which we can com- 
mune with God, the Lord of past ages, and see His great 
plans unfolding themselves, and His great thoughts liv- 
ing through countless years ; by which all continuity, 
advance, elevation of the individual and of the race, is 
possible. All this is plain, and may be passed by as 
with a single look. But let us now reflect how memory 
bears upon our character and destiny in one or two par- 
ticulars. 

1. First, memory can carry forward the knowledge of 



Time Past, Present, and to Come. 233 

past misdeeds through the boundless future. Of course it 
carries along also deeds of love and truth on its wing 
into the remote regions of our existence. But the 
thought most affecting for a sinner like man is, that it 
can and must as surely take with it also misdeeds and 
misfeelings. It drops nothing like a careless messenger, 
but saves all as a trustful steward of God. Life and its 
deeds never wholly die and are gone. Events may be 
out of mind for a time, but they only sleep ; they can 
awake and stare us in the face with the old countenance. 
There are facts that go to show that seemingly buried 
knowledge can return into the mind. There are other 
facts that show — as some persons recovered from drown- 
ing have testified — that the stream of past events may 
rush through the mind so fast and so distinctly, at once, 
that the whole of life seems acted over again in a few 
minutes. It is like the photograph of an immense 
landscape brought within the compass of an inch. Is, 
now, this revival of the past a law of the mind for the 
present world only, and is oblivion to come over us at 
death ? Or, rather, does it not belong to this life that 
the action of body on soul makes us forgetful, while the 
soul in its own pure essence is intensely wide-awake? 
There is a provision made for the recovery of thoughts 
that have escaped by means of the numberless webs of 
the association of ideas, and all these can be brought 
back on the fit occasion without our seeking. The fact 
is, we have in us the materials for the judgment day. They 
lie now piled up in dark chambers ; they will be brought 
from their chests, and their forgotten testimony will shine 
like fire. " For behold the day cometh that shall burn 
as an oven ; and all the proud, yea, all that do wickedly, 
shall be as stubble." Tho day of judgment is no ap- 
pointed, instituted thing ; it is the necessary sequel of a life 
of the thinking man under tho righteous reign of God. 
You, then, who sin and forget it, who appear to your- 



234 Time Past, Present? and to Come. 

selves not so very near to danger, when, by processes 
of your own, you have hid sin from your own eyes, as 
men hide live coals under the ashes — what, I ask, will 
you do when you find these coals to be still alive ages 
hence, and when they are freed from the rubbish that 
covered them ? Can you make God forget ? That would 
be something to the purpose, were it possible. Can you 
expect that feelings, such as the sense of ill-desert, which 
are immutable records of your own against yourself, will 
be blotted out by time ? Or, if the particulars could be 
supposed to become obscure, might not the general im- 
pression come back with about the same strength and 
vividness ? Even sin, then, has, in a sense, an eternal 
life. It can never grow old and vanish away. There is 
no water of Lethe in the moral system, unless by some 
interposition of God, and some deliverance from the 
power of sin. Even then, though the soul should become 
conscious of a new life and restored purity, though it 
received and enjoyed the Divine favor for what it had be- 
come, as contrasted with what it once was — it is hard to 
conceive of an entire absence of painful self-condemna- 
tion for evil which memory looks back upon, though 
committed countless ages before. 

2. I remark again, however, that there is a wise provi- 
sion by which, according to the ordinary laws of this life, 
the events of the past do not stay with us, generally, in all 
their first vividness. In other words, the actual weaknesses 
of memory are in part calculated for our moral as well 
as mental benefit. If we remembered everything as it 
was when it occurred, small as well as great, we should 
be unfitted for this world's special work, and for prog- 
ress in good — even the possibility of a better life might 
be taken away from the sinner. In the course of our 
earthly life, there are immense numbers of particulars 
which are of no value as soon as they have passed by and 
done their work. All actions which have to do with the 



Time Past, Present, and to Come. 235 

daily sustenance of the body, almost all casual sights and 
sounds, that which we did last week in the routine of 
life from morning until sleep, which has no direct bear- 
ing on the future — all such things as make up the mass 
of events, it is a blessing to have forgotten. Suppose that 
the relish of food staid in the memory with all the vivid- 
ness of actual taste, could we fail to become sensual? 
Moreover, there may be room for only a finite number 
of impressions within our minds. Knowledge would in- 
terfere with knowledge, if, instead of being recalled as 
now by an effort, it always staid fixed within us. There 
is thus a void left for important thoughts to fill. And 
if, through the limitation of our retentive powers, we 
lose much that we would gladly keep, if it is a sign of 
our decay that we cannot preserve and cannot recall very 
many of our former acquisitions, still, we must not doubt 
that it is better for the purposes of our being that we 
can forget many things than if we were under the law 
of remembering all things. 

These remarks gather importance as we look at our 
moral and spiritual nature. The possibility, indeed, of 
our becoming sincerely children of God depends on 
our consciousness of sin, and willingness to confess it. 
In order to be led to acknowledge and forsake sin, we 
must — it would seem — have strong impressions of our 
sinfulness, dependent, in part, on recollection ; yet we 
are continually breaking the chain which binds us to 
past events. It may even have happened that some 
murderers or other criminals of the highest grade have 
lost the memory of some of their greatest sins. But a 
sincere penitent cannot well forget the great sins he may 
have fallen into. Yet such a penitent, by keeping in 
mind past sins with their aggravation, may be prevented 
from using his active powers. Remorse might reign in 
our souls to the exclusion of the purpose of amendment. 
Now there must be hope and vigor in every mind that 



236 Time Past, Present, and to Come. 

successfully undertakes the work of rising above its 
present condition. A world of sinners brooding over 
the past, seeing nothing but their own delinquencies, 
would be a world of despair ; and that state of mind is 
most hopeless in which the difficulty of the work to be 
done is made greater by memory of past ill-success, of 
broken resolutions, and resisted motives, without a new 
principle, like the spirit of God, invigorating and sug- 
gesting hope to the heart. 

It is manifest also that this weakening of the hold of the 
past on us — owing to the defects of memory, within cer- 
tain limits — helps on all improvement. Minds of finite 
capacities, if every past thing was continually fresh, 
would be full of details without the power of making 
principles prominent. The strength of impressions of 
particulars, when aided by the imagination, would give 
the past an undue preponderance in our minds. We 
should approach the future with half-averted eyes. Per- 
fection cannot lie in the past, but only in the future ; 
our ideal must not have already been reached, otherwise 
there is no motive to go forward. How could a world of 
romantic dreamers, of poets whose paradise lay in the 
days of old, make headway toward the great goal ap- 
pointed for our race ? But when we remember princi- 
ples, and general strains, and life-currents of action, we 
can, without the burden of too great details, purpose in 
view of our past and live for our future. 

To this it should be added that there is a compromise 
effected in our nature — so to speak — between the pres- 
ent and the past by the power of recollection. We hunt 
up stray thoughts by using the laws which associate them 
with one another ; and they also come back of them- 
selves without our search. Even the painfulness of past 
deeds, if only vivid enough, becomes a bond of associa- 
tion by which they are brought back. In this way sin 
becomes its own punishment. Who knows, when he 



Time Past, Present, and to Corns. 237 

violates bis conscience whether he can ever wholly for- 
get what he has done ; whether it has not been indelibly 
engraven on his memory f Or, if he forgets it, and has 
the comfort of oblivion, who knows how long this can last, 
and whether, while he is in pursuit of something else, 
the spell that laid the unwelcome guest in a long sleep 
may not be broken ; and sin awake before his eyes, so 
that he shall see it in all its distinct features of evil ? He 
seeks to turn aside, but the very effort ties it to him 
more closely. He seeks to drown the painful thought 
in the flood of things, in worldly cares and industries, 
but at every gap of labor, in it peeps, haunting him in- 
tolerably. And so we may go forward into a future life, 
and say that the same power of recollection may con- 
tinue there and then— must continue, if many awaken- 
ings of recollection, after long years of conscience- 
slumber, can be argued from. So that Milton's lines — 

" Me miserable ! which way shall I fly ? 
Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell," 

may be justified by a law of our own minds, and be 
built on a rock of sharp, hard truth. 

2. Another remark deserving our consideration, in 
view of the divisions of time, is that we ought to live for 
the present as well as for the future. Moralists talk of the 
present as a point in an endless path, and they represent 
the future of that path as being alone of importance. 
The weight of each present moment consists, they sa}% 
of its bearing on all our moments ; that is, on our eter- 
nal life. There is truth and there is falsehood in such 
remarks. A man who lives for the moment or by the 
hour is less than the animal whoso instinct forewarns 
and guards against future evils. A man who has no 
plans and no hopes and no motives into which the time 
to come enters, who sails as if down a stream without 
thought, will be driven among stormy waves by and by 



238 Time Past, Present, ao%d to Gome. 

for which he has made no provision. But, on the othei 
hand, exclusive living for the future is no virtue of char- 
acter. "What is the future but a row of moments which 
are to be present, and what worth can there be in any of 
these, if they are worth nothing while they are with us ? 
It would be as if a man passing through grand scenery 
should not look on the beauties before his eyes because 
finer points of view were coming, and he should so act 
until the journey's end. The importance of the future 
is the imx^ortance of a series of times that are to be 
present. If the future always remained future, it would 
be valueless. But let us test these remarks by scriptural 
truth. What can trust do — that is worth anything to 
us — if it cannot lay our interests for the future in the 
hand of God, and thus prevent the crowd of cares from 
coming to lodge with us before their time ? And does 
not Christ say, " Take no thought for the morrow, for 
the morrow shall take thought for the things of itsel£ 
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof ? " To enjoy 
the moment as it passes is the attainment of a quiet, 
restful soul ; we may conceive of the saints in glory as 
living without need of forethought against want, without 
dread of temptations or losses, absorbed in God and in 
whatever makes up present bliss. The nearer we come 
to a perpetual presence of satisfaction, so much the 
nearer we approach to an unchangeable possession of 
what in this life our souls find it hard to reach. How 
unlike is this peace of souls to our feverish American 
haste, our inability to enjoy life until it settles on its 
dregs ; our insurances and provisions against evil ; as if 
each of us were a castle besieged by enemies. 

And yet we express only half a truth, when we say 
that the present has its rights to quiet and enjoyment 
and ought not to be stripped of its cheerfulness by 
future fears or future plans. For the perfection of our 
being would be impossible if we lived for the present, 



Time Past, Present, and to Come. 239 

without plan or forethought ; and Christ evidently, by 
take no thought, as our version has it, meant, be not so- 
licitous for the morrow. It is anxiety that He condemns 
— anxiety, the foe of quiet trust, anxiety that anticipates 
evil, as if we had not reached a state of peace with God, 
anxiety that harasses the present, and eats out all the 
sweetness of life. God would have us plan great plans, 
embracing all the future, even as He planned our salva- 
tion, and, as Christ died His death on the cross, every 
day He lived, as a part of that plan, He would have us 
project or cast forward our minds into the coming time ; 
He would not rebuke us for calculating beforehand, from 
prophesying and hoping ; but He wants us to possess 
also profound peace and calm within our souls, to feel 
as a child feels on a sunny day, undisturbed by fear of 
a storm to-morrow. In this way every moment would 
fly along on wings of gladness. So, then, we have two 
great things to do —to live for the moment and to live 
for all time, and these interests of the present and of the 
future must be reconciled, somehow or other, if we ever 
lead a blessed life. A life of faith will furnish the only 
true reconciliation. 

Life is full of things to be done, so that it is unwise, 
if not sinful, either to throw the duty of the present for- 
ward or to anticipate what ought to be the future's ap- 
propriate work. God does nothing too soon or too late, 
but everything in its season. And all progress depends 
on acting at the right time. You may have known per- 
sons who put off work until to-morrow, for the sake of 
amusement, and when the weight of the past, besides 
that of the present, came on their backs, it crushed them. 
Or you may have known those who were too provident, 
who sought to rob the future of its office, that it might 
furnish them rest, or better opportunities. But this 
overtasked them, and wore them out Neither of theso 
courses is wise ; overy moment has its rights. This is 



240 Time Past, Present, and to Come. 

true in spiritual things as well as in temporal. We put 
off duty, and so burden the future by our neglects as 
well as by self-reproaches. Oh ! how busy life is, if re- 
pentance, amendment, watch against coming dangers, 
protection against our own former wrong habits, all 
crowd at once on our attention. How the difficulties of 
our life increase when we have to build and fight at 
once ; and when the fight is against our self- created de- 
ficiencies, ourselves neglected in the past. This is what 
the running of a character to waste means — that it 
heaps up a debt which the future cannot pay, and so the 
soul is bankrupt. The true idea of life is an equable ful- 
ness, readiness for present duty, doing to-day the work of 
to-day, no overcrowding, no vacancy, no vain regrets, no 
vainer wishes ; a regularity like that of the seasons mov- 
ing round by the law and in the service of God. Fidel- 
ity to truth and to God in a sense does justice to time ; 
it assigns to time what belongs to it, whether it be 
play, rest or work, prayer or active beneficence. He 
who is thus just to time will find it his friend ; he will 
not be in a hurry ; he will not be too slow, but will 
keep step with time, until, at the due time he lands on 
the eternal shore. And as he did everything at the 
right time, Time will witness in his favor before the 
Lord of life and of death. 

3. And thus, lastly, we discover the significance of 
future time. If we were to live always in the world, on 
much the same level, amid the same cares and duties as 
now, working and resting, eating, chinking, sleeping, 
hoping and fearing — for a thousand ages just as now — 
our future would not be of much importance. We 
should not deserve to be called immortals, but, rather, 
undying earthworms, never-ending creatures of a day. 
But who would want such an existence ? Who could 
endure it, except by an act of religious resignation like 
that of a monk in his cell ? How little and mean would 



Time Past, Present, and to Come. 241 

the minutes of such a kind of endless life become to us ; 
how tedious and how slow. And if this be so, why is it 
so ? It is so because it is an essential part of the plan 
of our earthly condition that it should end. There must 
come a catastrophe, a winding-up, if our nature has any 
noble capacities that stretch out beyond our earth- 
colored forms of knowledge, beyond our local plans and 
hopes. It is not too bold to say that a superior being, 
who knew nothing of our destiny as it respects life and 
death, would conclude that death ought to be man's lot, 
and that he was made to finish his existence in some 
other sphere. This he would find out as soon as he per- 
ceived what man could do, and what his earthly limita- 
tions prevented him from doing. Death seems to be the 
most suitable event for an immortal placed on earth, 
more suitable for him than for the beast which may have 
no hereafter. This, then, is the true significance of 
future time, that, as it unrolls, a great change is to come 
over us — a change unlike anything in the past, and 
which we can hardly conceive of, even when we lay our 
hands on the cold corpse, and feel that our friend 
is not there. For this futurity, life and death are 
preparations ; it is this that makes life a great some- 
thing, full of praise or full of shame. It is this that 
makes the world a theatre for an immortal. For every 
living man, then, the future has one thing in it wholly 
unlike in kind all the events of the past. Birth, or 
man's entrance into a world of time, was strange ; that 
is the unique event of time gone by. Death, which is 
called for and made suitable by the whole meaning of 
life, is the unique event of time to come. And this 
unique event ought to throw a new power and energy 
into all our passing moments. If we lived always hero, 
as I said, the moments would bo little and mean ; but 
now they can be great and full of result. I ought to 
feci that, bocausc I am going to die, I am a privileged 



242 Time Past, Present, and to Come. 

person ; I can escape from ignorance and darkness ; I 
may see God ; I may rise above all earthliness and all 
manner of sin. But, in order that this may be so, I 
must be schooled and trained by time future. I must 
let it, as it comes, teach me to estimate all my time 
aright. It must show me how to do nothing which I 
shall wish to forget, because it is mean and bad — noth- 
ing which can take from me the full joy of the future 
when it becomes present. The future, thus, by its one 
great event, ought to sober me, and train me as much as 
I could be trained by all the experience of the \ st. I 
ought to draw wisdom from the unknown as well as from 
the known. Shall I, then, foolishly ask how can the un- 
known, the mysterious passage out of this world, I 
know not when, act on me except through my fears? 
But there are many, there might be many more, who 
have no fear of death, to whom it seems to be the door 
opening into a divine life. How do they live ? How 
does the sight of death in the distance act upon them ? 
Not to scare them in their sins, but to give dignity and 
composure to life. They are to be ushered into the 
presence of Him who is both Judge and Father. 
Therefore, although full of hope, they are full also of 
collectedness and of sobriety. They separate themselves 
from life, while they live in it. "They die every day 
they live." This strain of thought infuses into the tone 
of their judgments respecting life a certain justness and 
a subdued estimate. They are solemn because, at a dis- 
tance, they hear the roar of the great ocean. As to the 
man who is ready to launch on the deep the strong con- 
trast between sea and land throws all minor contrasts 
into the shade ; so to souls that take in the whole of 
existence the great contrast is that of this present time 
and the eternal life on high. To them the little distinc- 
tions between times here, between childhood, manhood, 
old age ; between the past, bringing along its influences ; 



Time Past, Present, and to Come. 243 

the present such as the past has fashioned it ; the fut- 
ure such as hope paints it, or character will make it — 
for them, I say, these distinctions, little, comparatively 
speaking, disappear ; and their leading measures of 
time are the present life and the life to come. And so 
habits, characters, choices of action, estimates of pleas- 
ure, as well as hopes, are all chastened, ennobled, beau- 
tified ; they are clothing themselves for the presence of 
the King eternal, immortal, invisible. And so, when they 
hear the death trump calling them to come away, its 
clang, fearful to so many, turns for them into the voice 
of celestial music. 

It is possible for us, my friends, I add in closing, to 
make a wise use of life ; but we cannot do this without 
some strong impression that life must end. Let it not, 
however, be imputed to me that I would have the one 
idea of eternity so to reign in the mind and over the 
feelings as to destroy the rich variety of life, considered 
as an earthly life ; and to throw a death-shade on every 
present enjoyment. This is far from what I seek to do 
by remarks such as I here make. This is that to which 
the votary of pleasure attains, when, at some point in 
his career, the life to come stares at him, as an unwel- 
come stranger, and frightens him with a sense of his 
sin. He cannot forsake his sin, for it is his all ; he has 
no other capacity of enjoyment ; he cannot unlearn the 
false judgments which he has formed as a barrier against 
unpleasant convictions, for God and eternity now stand 
before him as judges, and give him no rest for calm re- 
flection. All now is dark to him. Pleasure has a poison 
in it. Bat to the chastened, purified mind eternity 
reads no lesson against any healthy enjoyment. For 
such a one earth and heaven, time and eternity, fit into 
one another. The past hands over no record of use- 
lessness and worldliness to the future ; the near future 
throws the light of hopo on tho more distant future. 



244 Time Past, Present, and to Come. 

And so he is open to earthly, as well as heavenly enjoy- 
ment. He loves the lower forms of beauty and joy that 
greet him here on earth, but expects more from the 
higher that are as yet far out of sight. Existence is 
joyful as it passes ; it is joyful in prospect. There are 
regrets in leaving the best things to be tasted here, but 
there are expectations, it may be assurances, also, that 
the best things there are more satisfying, more solid, 
more pure. On the side of the balance in which he 
weighs the future against the present, there is an eternal 
weight of glory. 



SERMON XVII. 

THE VIRTUES WHICH HAVE TRUTHFULNESS FOR THEIR 
BASIS. 

Ephes. iv. 25. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth 
with his neighbor ; for we are members one of another. 

The quality of truthfulness, or of allegiance to truth, 
in the character, extends far beyond the point of scrupu- 
lously avoiding untrue statements. A person may never 
tell what would usually be called a falsehood, and yet may 
have a thoroughly insincere, hypocritical, or artificial 
character. It needs but a coarse, dull sense of right and 
wrong to abstain from telling lies, while it belongs to a 
very sensitive, delicate conscience to shun the numberless 
by-paths of false appearances and false pretences which 
meet one on all sides and are very pleasant to walk in. 
The finish of the character, in regard to truthfulness, is 
one of the noblest attainments of Christian manhood, and 
it is as difficult as perfection is in any other department. 
To make any progress in this direction we must have a 
clear view of the field ; we must form an idea of what it 
is to be an Israelite indeed without guile ; we must per- 
ceive how insinuating in some of its forms untruthfulness 
is, and how blessed the height — if we can reach it — where 
our whole soul shall breathe the air of truth, and of 
nothing but truth. 

Give me then your attention, dear brethren, while I lay 
before you in a miscellaneous way some of those faults of 
character partaking of the quality of the false, which, as 
men and as Christians, we ought to avoid, and some of 
those forms of truthfulness which we ought to admire and 
must possess if we are followers of Christ. 

245 



246 The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 

And may I not mention first, as worthy of being in 
general avoided, the quality of dissimulation, or the con- 
cealment of our real opinions, which has been contrasted 
with simulation, or the pretending to be, or to think, some- 
thing other than the reality. Here I do not refer to those 
native differences which must always be observable between 
frank or demonstrative and reserved or undemonstrative 
characters. Nor do I at all say that we are always bound 
to express what we think, or that we may not put ourselves 
on our guard by concealment against designing enemies. 
But I refer to studious concealment of principles and feel- 
ings in order that others may have a false impression of us 
from our silence. The kind of frankness which consists 
in avowing our true sentiments, or at least the readiness 
to do this, on the right occasion, is what all men admire ; 
and when the moving cause to dissimulation is fear, the 
opposite quality may be a very manly and even a highly 
Christian one. So, for instance, he who confesses Christ 
amid a company of scoffers, instead of holding his peace 
and covering up the convictions of his soul, has the spirit 
of a martyr. And he will have this good fruit of his 
openness, that besides feeling conscious of doing a noble 
act, he strengthens his convictions themselves. It has 
been laid to the charge of Cromwell that he was a dissem- 
bler, who allowed others to interpret his silence as they 
would, and then surprised them by acting otherwise than 
they expected. His most favorable biographers have 
defended him on the ground that he told no lies, and that 
being in the midst of dangerous plotters, he was unable to 
save himself or his cause in any other way. I will not 
dispute the justice of the defence, but I notice the instance 
as showing how men confound dissembling with falsehood, 
and therefore how these must border on one another ; and 
as showing also that a high religionist like Cromwell, by 
his dissembling, gave color to the charge that his religion 
was insincere. It is obvious that the practice, carried out 



The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 247 

to any great length, is wrong and fraught with danger. It 
is wrong, for what right have I to live on terms of confi- 
dence with others, hear their indiscreet utterances of hon- 
est opinion, give them impressions by my constant silence 
that I think with them, and yet all the while differ from 
them entirely ? Would they admit me to their commu- 
nion, if they knew what I know of my sentiments ? And 
is it not an obligation of honor and justice that in a free 
interchange of feelings I shall not be an insidious specta- 
tor, on the watch while others are opening their breasts ? 
Nay, rather, does not a certain freedom of intercourse 
imply that continued silence means assent or at least no 
disapprobation? We may appeal to instinctive feeling 
also, and ask whom men will respect — him who hides his 
true self in important respects from others out of fear or 
that he may have the benefit of their companionship, or 
him who is resolved to put on no disguise, but to let him- 
self pass among his fellows for what he is ? Such a man 
loses nothing, for all see that he has a love of truth supe- 
rior to fear or interest. 

And again, dissimulation is fraught with danger, for it 
leads into falsehood. The habit of making false impres- 
sions or suffering them to be made by silence lies next door 
to direct untruth. You feel that you have deceived by 
concealment, and that you may just as well reach the 
same point by a lie. Suppose the case of an early Chris- 
tian, who shut up his faith in himself, heard Christians 
traduced and heathenism advocated, and kept his peace 
until the heathen around him thought him lukewarm or 
one of themselves — would he, when trial came, be as 
likely to say, " I too am a believer in Christ," and suffer 
for his Lord, as he would have been, if in all modest ways 
he had let his faith be known ? He kept still because he 
was afraid, and he nursed his fear. Would not the same 
fear be the more likely to make him recreant, to Christ? 
k Dissimulation, then, if dictated by fear or policy, is 



248 The Virtues which have Truthfulness for ilueir Basis. 

dangerous as fostering a cowardly, unmanly temper, and 
as leading across the line which separates disingenuous 
concealment from positive untruth. 

Next to dissimulation I mention pretence, which im- 
plies an intentional concealment of the reality by some- 
thing false or feigned offered to the inspection of others. 
A man is conscious of something pertaining to him which 
he would gladly hide from view, and so he endeavors to 
make a false impression of himself before his fellow-men 
by some specious show or unfounded claim. Or he de- 
sires the reputation of that which he is not or does not 
possess, and endeavors by his conduct to lead others into 
error. Thus a merchant who has no capital makes a false 
impression on others in regard to his pecuniary ability, 
that he may obtain a loan of money ; or a sciolist pretends 
to have learning, when he is ignorant ; or a libertine to be 
moral when he is immoral ; or a hypocrite in religion to 
be a believer or a good man when he is neither. We call 
by the name of hypocrisy the worst kind of pretence, false 
assumption of the religious character for selfish purposes. 
All men, good and bad, concur in condemning and abhor- 
ring this class of persons ; and truly he is among the worst 
of mankind who lives directly under the truths and mo- 
tives of a gospel which loathes hypocrisy, and yet for 
selfish purposes puts on a cloak of religion. He is so bad 
that many who are no hypocrites think quite well of 
themselves, because they are better than he. But, 
in fact, all pretence is one; and all pretenders are 
players of a part ; they put on a mask to hide their true 
characters. There are pretenders to wealth, who, by 
dexterous shows get the reputation of riches, when 
they cannot pay their debts. There are pretenders 
to skill in a learned profession, who impose on the 
ignorant by making the little they know seem great. 
There are pretenders to familiarity with great people, 
who want to seem important in other men's eyes. There 



The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 249 

are pretenders in all the departments of business — such 
for instance as sell a few articles cheap in order to make 
the more upon their principal goods. In fact all compe- 
tition as the world goes, encourages pretence, for men 
will not wait until their character brings customers, but 
will seek custom by pretence, before they can establish a 
reputation. There are, again, pretenders in the fashionable 
world, who impose on the judgment of others, or creep 
into good company by audacious assumption. These and 
all other pretenders — pretenders to morality, who talk 
smoothly and eloquently of virtue, while they practice 
vice in secret ; pretenders to sentiment, who borrow the 
language of others to cover dead and worn-out hearts ; 
pretenders to taste, who ape the judgment of critics or con- 
noisseurs with no sensibility of eye or ear or soul ; pre- 
tenders to religion, who dishonor and disgrace religion, 
and yet all the more show the value and the want of it in 
the world — all these need only to be mentioned, for the 
moral sense of mankind is against them and awards 
them scoffs or indignation, according to a milder or 
harsher rule for measuring their characters. And with- 
out doubt, the feeling of man reflects herein the moral 
estimates of God, and of our Lord, who has said things 
of hypocrisy as fearful as any words that were ever 
uttered. For let us think of the great God watching every 
kind of hypocrite as he tries to deceive his fellows by 
empty shows ; as he glories in his success ; as he thinks the 
secret is known only to himself. Can He, the infinitely 
pure and true, fall below man in His abhorrence of such 
a character? And if the blind man could once open his 
eye on God, seeing Him in all the glory of His truth, 
and seeing that there is one immortal witness against him, 
who knows all and remembers all, could he help being 
withered and loathing himself? 

But enough of these : there is a less obvious kind of 
pretence into which we are all apt to fall, which, how- 
11* 



250 The Virtues which Imve Truthfulness for their Basis. 

ever, cannot stand on its defence, when tried by the laws 
of truth. It is what is called card; a word which denotes 
the aping of others in expressions of feeling and opinion 5 
by the use of set, stereotyped words which pass current in 
a certain circle of religion, fashion, or taste. Take reli- 
gious cant as the most signal example. I refer not now 
to the words peculiar to a certain sect to denote their 
views concerning doctrine and a religious life, for there 
must be such words, and they contain more or less of 
truth. Nor can the term cant be applied with any pro- 
priety to the terms for conversion or repentance, or to 
any exercise of our religious nature in view of truth. He 
whose taste would be offended by these words, when used 
on the proper occasion, would most probably dislike the 
thing denoted by them, and the Gospel itself. 

But, there are many senses of words peculiar to certain 
classes of religious people, and many phrases, also, coined 
by them in the fervency of their feeling, — expressions of a 
genuine Christian spirit in their mouth, which others with- 
out their earnestness borrow from them : perhaps in the 
next age, when piety no longer burns with a bright flame, 
they remain on the lips, as marks that religion has be- 
come a mere lip-service. Now the use of such words may 
offend a nice taste, but cant is something beyond want of 
taste ; it is deadness using the language of life ; it is insin- 
cerity clothed in the garb of sincerity, and it is, therefore, 
a sin against truth. In the most marked ca'ses, cant is 
the dialect of hypocrisy, using on calculation terms to 
which it attaches no living sense drawn from experience. 
In the least marked cases it is catching up from others and 
saying over by rote that which proceeds not from the heart. 
But there are other kinds of cant, as that of sentiment, 
when a person adopts language of feeling or of fancy, 
which is not the utterance of the soul within, but a lesson 
taught by society ; or as the cant of taste, where an in- 
structed person apes the language of critics and seems to 



The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 251 

have lively sensibility, when he is incapable of perceiving 
the beauty or the majesty, whether of nature or of art. 
Such pretension, which passes from one to another, like a 
contagion, a truthful mind will instinctively shrink from. 
He cannot say what he does not truly feel. He cannot 
profess to judge where he knows he has no power of pass- 
ing a judgment. It gives him pain to be thought better 
or more knowing than he is, or to be rated higher than 
the truth will warrant. And this without doubt accords 
with the judgment of the God of truth. Avoid then all 
pretence. Act out not a borrowed character, but that 
which belongs to you. It is better to bear our own fruit 
than to have foreign blossoms hanging on us. Develop 
your own life into Christian perfection, rather than ape 
another's words and put on his likeness. There is none of 
us, the most crabbed, the most ungainly, the most inflex- 
ible, that cannot be built up with God's help, into a living 
temple beautified by holiness; there is none of us, however 
promising and apt, that will cover his true self up in a 
borrowed robe, who will not readily be detected by sharp 
observers, and at last be laid bare at the great trial of 
character. 

We mention next, as closely bordering on the vice of 
character already named, insincerity, especially in profes- 
sions of regard and in the bestowment of praise. When a 
person puts on the semblance of friendship for another, 
expressing it in warm terms to his face, while he laughs 
at him behind his back, we call this hypocrisy of a black 
dye. But some insincere ways of making another 
believe that you are his friend are not so obviously 
wicked as this. You have a kindly feeling towards him 
and exaggerate it in your words or shows, so that he 
mistakes by your fault his true place in your esteem. Or 
you are indifferent to him and yet abuse the signs of 
politeness, so that he puts a false construction on your 
words and shows. You thus present yourself to others us 



252 The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 

ready to do for them what is beyond your intention, and 
when the test comes and you fail, they are wounded and 
feel that they have been falsely dealt with. Most of 
such insincere professions are the refuges of selfishness 
ashamed to come to the light and putting on the forms 
of good will. They are produced by a high standard of 
character around us, — we are ashamed to be thought to 
fail in kindness or friendliness, and so assume its garb. 
Here we see how love in the heart would prevent all such 
false shows. Having the feeling within us ve should not 
be anxious to exhibit it. It would manifest itself freely. 
Our civility would not be well-bred but heart-felt ; not a 
manner put on but an expression of the hidden man 
within. 

The same insincerity appears in the form of flattery. 
This may be no sin of falsehood ; one may tell the truth 
to another merely to please him and secure his esteem ; 
the evil here lying in the motive and the disregard for his 
character, which is injured by having only its best side 
placed before his eyes. But there is another flattery 
more insidious and full of the spirit of falsehood, as 
where one shows a deference to another in his manner 
which he does not feel, or where he exaggerates his 
excellencies or glosses over his failings, or where he im- 
putes to him motives which could not have existed. 
There are then two evils in this bad practice, the motive 
for it and the false representation. Love would prevent 
both. It would praise where praise would do good; it 
would insinuate nothing which was not strictly true. It 
would not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoice in the truth. 

We pass on next to the faults of character opposed to 
simplicity. This word denoted at first the quality of being 
unfolded, as contrasted to that which was folded together, 
and so simplicity in a moral sense and duplicity are moral 
opposites. But the word has a wide application ; when 
used in reference to taste it denotes the avoidance of tho 



The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 253 

artificial, the overwrought, the overloaded with ornament, 
the pretentious. When used in reference to our purposes 
it denotes that two motives, as self-interest and good-will, 
are not mixed in producing the same act, or that we aim 
at truth rather than at impression. As a moral quality 
it denotes the absence of guile, a character without ar- 
tifice. Everywhere we perceive that it implies the true 
as against the false, the real and natural as against the 
artificial, and we feel that a general simplicity of char- 
acter, if native, is a most valuable characteristic, and if 
a fruit of Christian principle, is a following of Him in 
whose mouth was no guile. On the other hand the want of 
this quality is a serious defect. Even a taste which rejects 
it, a taste for excess of ornament, for instance, is a sure 
result of an immoral civilization, so that here we have 
another sign that truth as a trait of society is necessary 
for all healthy judgments as well as for sound morals, 
and that as soon as falsehood creeps in, it brings a 
blight upon art as well as on character. 

It is noticeable that simplicity of character or freedom 
from artifice and guile is often connected with openness or 
transparency of character. Now a man whose guileless- 
ness is apparent seems to other men, in a community 
where falsehood prevails, to be destitute of a power which 
it is often desirable to use. He has an aversion native or 
from principle to falsehood, and, therefore, appears to be 
unable to defeat the designs of falsehood. Hence sim- 
plicity and kindred words come in a number of languages 
to mean want of penetration, want of common sense, and 
the more depraved the community, the more easy and 
natural will such a transition of sense be. Trickery, the 
power to circumvent and to deceive, will pass for talent, 
and the simple-hearted will be despised. But in truth 
there is no necessary connection between simplicity and 
folly, between knavery and shrewdness. And no charac- 
teristic is more successful in life, or more widely esteemed 



254 The Virtues which have Truthfulness for tlieir Basis. 

than simplicity. The man who gains his objects in a 
round-about way, who covers himself up in a mist, who 
resorts to indirect means to gain his end, becomes sus- 
pected and feared ; he in turn suspects and fears others ; 
and thus his character causes an alienation or even an 
opposition between him and his fellow-men, which inter- 
feres with his success by destroying confidence, and, it 
may be, lands him at last in positive dishonesty. The 
simple-hearted again not only are loved and trusted, but 
have their souls open to all truth which rests on evidence. 
They may be as wise as serpents while they are as harmless 
as doves ; they may see the stratagem and chicanery of 
others, while they would shrink from using the same 
weapons themselves. They often defeat artifice by sim- 
plicity, because a trickish, artful mind cannot under- 
stand a quality so unlike its own. They come with the 
best preparation to the truths and obligations of religion, 
for they are apt to be not far from the kingdom of God, 
as having a love for simple truth and a sincerity of pur- 
pose. 

Simplicity in statements, again, is a form which the 
truthful spirit assumes, and the fault most opposite to it is 
careless or reckless exaggeration. There are causes for 
exaggeration which are not strictly criminal. Such are 
excitement of feeling and a lively conception. The orator 
or the preacher with all due love of truth may run into 
overstatements, may enhance the relative importance of 
that which arouses his soul for the time — this is pardona- 
ble, it may be not easily avoidable ; but even here, the 
desire to conform to the strict truth, going along with all 
the movements of the mind, will give rise to a certain so- 
briety of statement, and especially will prevent a con- 
scientious man from aiming to produce an effect by inten- 
tional exaggeration. This is a sin against the law of 
truth. The impression must be heightened beyond what 
the reality will warrant — the person thinks — in order that 



The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 255 

any effect may be produced. He confounds overstrained 
expression with force, and adherence to the reality with 
weakness. Thus he betrays a want of confidence in the 
power of truth, and this fault of his brings his own 
reward. For men will easily discover his exaggerations 
and will make excessive deduction from them. If he 
gives statements of events, men will distrust his reports ; 
if he argues, they will be unconvinced, because this 
quality of his injures all his arguments ; and so it turns 
out, that he is weak, and simple truth in all its forms of 
bare statement, of eloquent but honest representation, of 
honest feeling not put on for effect, — simple truth, I say, 
is ever strong. 

Another and a kindred fault opposed to a spirit of 
truthfulness is inaccuracy in representation and reports. It 
may be in this case that an imperfect memory of particu- 
lars prevents a person from retaining exact outlines of 
events in his mind, or that the power of observation is 
impaired by physical defects. In such a case a person 
ought to be aware of his liability to error, and the love 
of truth will supply him with caution, or lead him to 
qualify his statements. But there are cases where inac- 
curacy is more culpable, as where it proceeds from undue 
haste which cannot stop to sift evidence or collect ma- 
terials for judgment, or — what is far worse — where the in- 
accuracy is due to partiality or prejudice. In the first 
case loyalty to truth demands that a man should not 
sacrifice it to impatience or indolence, which is a common 
sin. How many books are rendered worthless and pass 
away because they are unreliable through the hurry of 
their authors. How many reports have to be recalled, 
the circulation of which might have been stopped by a 
little care, but the injurious effects of which nothing can 
heal. In the other case the sin is equally against truth 
and love, and approaches to the nature of slander, — a sin 



256 The Virtues which Jiave Truthfulness for their Basis. 

so unsocial and malignant that all men unite in detest- 
ing it. 

Another of the truthful virtues is candor, which partakes 
of the nature also of justice. It admits the weight of 
what makes against ourselves and confesses this with readi- 
ness. It acknowledges mistakes out of a spirit of fairness. 
In argument it gives an impartial view of the reasons 
urged by the opposite side. In stating the arguments of 
another it has no bias but gives them just as they are, 
mingling with them no conclusions of our own. In re- 
peating facts which concern ourselves it puts no color on 
them and conceals nothing, bat is willing to concede what 
may be injurious to our own cause. It prevents us from 
using false reasoning, from arguing for victory and not for 
truth. It is, in short, an unselfish, equitable love of the 
right as well as the true, and as such places the man who 
manifests it on a vantage ground against unfair, trickish, 
unscrupulous opposers. The want of candor, whether pas- 
sion, or prejudice, or selfish desire of success leads to it, is 
a trait which every lover of truth will avoid. 

I only add the mention of a sin somewhat akin to pre- 
tence and hypocrisy — the assigning of pretexts and motives 
for our conduct which do not exist. This is a very com- 
mon fault of our sinful nature, and it springs from the 
consciousness that the real motive is not good enough to 
be displayed, but must be put .in the back-ground while 
some other is thrust forward. This is often not very de- 
liberate — in which case there would be a condemnation of 
the act at the instant as of something false — but is half 
self-deception and half deception of others, like those 
polite expressions of regard which mean little or nothing. 
It takes place often in regard to actions of trifling impor- 
tance. Little acts of selfishness are whitened into some- 
thing better ; excuses are plead which are unreal ; by a 
series of petty deceptions unpleasant impressions concern- 
ing ourselves are brushed away from the minds of others. 



Tlie Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 257 

And the little hypocrisies pave the way for great. They 
blind us to ourselves. The pretexts we use to impose on 
others we half put faith in, and thus we weave a web of 
falsehood in which we ourselves are entangled. 

Such, presented in a miscellaneous way, are some of 
the forms of a character which departs from truth and 
from the God of truth. And now, when we look at the 
law of truth and the virtue of truthfulness in their details, 
does there not appear to be a great breadth in them? Do 
they not form a bulwark for the whole life and character? 
Let us think, my dear brethren, of the great beauty of a 
life built on truth, which avoids falsehood not in its 
grosser forms only, nor in those shapes which all con- 
demn, but in those aspects of it which many fail to per- 
ceive. It is the noblest attainment, next after being in 
love with God and man, to have a truthful spirit. As 
falsehood supports all sin, so does truth all virtue. But 
it is not an easy thing for man in his state of sin to live a 
life of unsullied truthfulness. Temptations to vain shows, 
to insincerity, to double-dealing meet him on every side. 
He loves esteem, and this principle leads him to wear 
false colors, to practice hypocrisy that he may seem to be 
good when he is not. He falls into sin, and to save him- 
self from its consequences he resorts to falsehoods. He 
colors facts or suppresses them ; he misrepresents his mo- 
tives for the better, that some faint traits of that worth 
which he will not possess may seem to belong to him. 
Then, too, he is exposed to corrupt examples ; multitudes 
around him are false and hollow, and to save themselves 
from the gnawings of conscience they invent false argu- 
ments for falsehood — thus adding an assault on truth 
itself to falsehood in practice. And in this career of pre- 
tence, the whole moral nature wilts; their souls feel a 
general blight, for he who has lost his veneration for truth 
has a mortal wouud in his soul. 

And how is it among us, my dear brethren ? We are 



258 The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 

gathered from the great world into a little community to 
study truth, to become exact, to enter into the reality of 
things ; our intellects are trained to detect fallacies, to 
draw nice lines round the borders of truth, to construct 
systems of truth rising up to the throne of God. In such a 
community ought not veracity, honor, sincerity to reign ? 
Where, in any gathering of young persons, should a high 
standard of general uprightness so easily be formed, and 
be maintained by so strong a sentiment ? But what is the 
actual state of things ? Do not facts, every now and then 
coming to light, do not your own charges made against 
one another, authorize us to believe, that not a few live 
here in a course of deliberate deception from year to year, 
that false excuses are invented, as if it were a small thing 
to sin against God and your own souls for a trifling pur- 
pose ? You are under very mild law, you assent to it by 
placing yourself here, and yet you avoid its operation by 
the most unworthy of all expedients. But if the evil 
stopped here, it would be trifling compared with what it 
is. Think of the general distrust concerniug character, 
which it brings in its train, instructors necessarily distrust- 
ing students, and students distrusting each other. Think 
how falsehood, as I showed in my last Sunday's discourse, 
helps on every other evil habit, so that you. open the door 
wide to the enticements of all other sins, when you consent 
to commit this sin. Think, that if you do not lower your 
standard and justify lying, you cannot help despising 
yourself, nor help knowing that others must feel the same 
towards you ; or if you have built up a wall of sophistries, 
in order to stifle the calls of conscience, so much the worse, 
for a callous conscience is the beginning of the soul's 
death. Think, if you should be aroused into repentance, 
what self-reproach you must pass through — self-reproach 
often bursting out into confession, and not content until it 
has made known the worst even to man. And all this is 
the preparation of intelligent, educated persons, taught to 



The Virtues which have Truthfulness for their Basis. 259 

take large views of life and of the issues of human con- 
duct — this is their preparation for the throne of the Judge, 
for the future life, where shame shall be exposed, and 
truth shall penetrate every dark recess. Oh, my dear 
friends, I beseech you to think of these things with that 
sobriety and that candor which they deserve. If you have 
yielded to a false sentiment, resist it henceforth. If you 
have helped to make it, help to unmake it. If you have 
come to believe that all are dishonest, become honest your- 
selves and you will confide in others. If you have sinned, 
turn from sin. Blessed be God, that while there must 
be an entire alienation on His part from the untruthful, 
His compassions are always awake for those who forsake 
evil. Enter into fellowship with Him by ingenuous con- 
fession and by avoiding " every false way." Pass over to 
the side of a Saviour, who never deceived men, and will 
be true to the end. Take the part of all honor and up- 
rightness. Let each one, in all earnestness, say, " Give me 
Thy help, O God, that I may live a life of strict, un- 
changeable truthfulness." 



SERMON XVIII. 

THE DEBT OWED BY EVERY GENERATION TO THE PAST. 
Gospel oe John iv. 38. Other men labored, and ye have entered into 
their labors. 

I will not stop to ask who were the other men here 
spoken of by onr Lord ; whether He refers in the plural 
only to Himself, or points back also to others — to the 
prophets, or even to Moses, as the forerunners of the 
Apostles and the pioneers in the work of the kingdom of 
Heaven. In any case, a principle of the widest applica- 
tion is brought before us — that no individual, in the 
strictest sense, begins his own work; that all enter into 
and carry out the labors of others ; and so, too, that all 
the generations of the world reap the fields their fore- 
fathers sowed ; that there is a dependence, a succession, in 
all the labors of men, a running account kept up by each 
present age to the credit of the whole past, and especially 
to the credit of its immediate predecessors 

This is indeed a characteristic of man in which he dif- 
fers almost wholly from the best endowed animals. They, 
in their successive generations, reach the same point of 
maturity, act out the characters of their races to about 
the same degree of perfection, and die without advancing 
their kind or leaving any new store of power or enjoyment 
to their posterity. If man, by taming and training them, 
can in a degree improve their breeds, even his action has 
the least efiect upon their races as wholes. The individuals 
may be more graceful, or strong, or useful ; but no quality 
of self-improvement has entered into the species. Man, on 
the other hand, the feeblest of creatures at his birth and 
the most dependent, is able to retain, transmit, record, and 
260 



The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 261 

plan ; by his social and moral instincts he forms common- 
wealths and makes laws ; he learns from others ; he com- 
municates to others ; he trains the young members of the 
community up to the measure of its knowledge and wis- 
dom ; he invents and spreads inventions — he thus builds 
a tower of one platform upon another, reaching toward 
the skies, from which, as its stories ascend, he holds nearer 
converse with Heaven and casts his eye over ampler 
spaces of earth. 

Now for all this the labor of one generation will not 
suffice ; but there must be constant, world-wide work and 
transmission. Human progress consists in this: that men 
have labored with body, with mind, and each next age has 
entered into their labors. It is possible indeed for a gen- 
eration to send nothing of value down the stream of time ; 
nay, it may obliterate or corrupt, and so put its successors 
into a worse position than if it had not existed. Such 
retrograde movements show that the law of progress is not 
a fatal one, nor dependent solely on the stores of know- 
ledge that have been laid up ; but on the other hand there 
is no other law of progress aside from this which we have 
before us : that each generation, by the help of its prede- 
cessors' toil handed down and retained, adds something to 
the general stock for the benefit of coming ages. Nor 
does God, when He intervenes in human history by super- 
natural revelations, disturb this law, for forthwith the 
truth, the power, the moral advancement, are leaven 
thrown into an age or a people, or possibly into a single 
mind, to leaven the whole world afterward by the same 
process by which human improvements produce their 
effect. And we ought not to separate progress from God, 
as some do, for He is in it all, whether it springs directly 
from something done by man, or from Ills own revelation. 
He is in all invention ; in all learning and science the plan 
is throughout His. Bezaleel, the ingenious artificer of the 
tabernacle, was animated by His spirit ; and so all genius, 



262 The Debt owed by every Generation to the Fast. 

all power, that starts the world forward, is as truly a part 
of His world-plan as is the Christian scheme of redemption. 
I. Let us consider, in some of its particulars, this plan of 
God for the human race, — that each generation enters into 
the labors of its predecessors, reaping what they have 
sown, while at the same time, if it is true to its appointed 
work, it hands over something more to posterity than it 
had received. Reflect then first on the labors which the 
teachers of mankind have undergone, in order that the 
world might reach its present state of advancement. The 
class of teachers may be divided into two portions, into 
such as transmit only and such as also originate. The 
first act directly on those who are just following them 
in the order of time; the others have a much wider 
field of direct action ; they are the teachers of all time, 
the " masters of all who know." To few is it given, out 
of the whole human race, thus to act over many ages and 
through many lands. The greatest portion either move 
the thought of their own times in new channels, or, in a 
more humble office still, simply make known to others 
what they themselves have learned. Yet all these teachers 
nave labored and men are entered into their labors. They 
have labored hard and long. Men, as they enjoy a work 
of art or give themselves to the study of a work of phi- 
losophy, must not suppose that everything flowed smoothly 
while the composition was going on, or that there were no 
difficulties in the preparation. "He that goeth forth 
weeping, bearing precious seed," is the fit motto for all who 
have employed their minds for the benefit of mankind. 
What agony of mind have inventors endured ; what 
anxiety and heart-sickness ; what unfruitful experiments, 
reaching through long years, have they tried, before suc- 
cess croWned their efforts. The same is true of any work 
of art which has long kept its place in the heart of a 
nation or of the world. A work of genius is the essence, 
It may be, of a whole life, the condensed knowledge, judg- 



The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 263 

inent, skill, that make up the man. So, too, in all the 
sciences, as in the philosophy of thought or of morals, 
what perplexities has a mind contended with, what hope 
and patience has it spent, what weighings of evidence, 
what reflection, what consultation have been needed 
before the painful work of composition began. It must 
not be supposed, that glimpses of truth are vouchsafed to 
those that skim over the surface of things in the spirit of 
curiosity or amusement ; nor that inventions enter vacant 
minds unsought and in full perfection ; nor that to the 
great poet or painter even the labor of composition or of 
correction, severe as it is, at all compares with that pre- 
paratory thought and work on which the whole achieve- 
ment depended. 

So, also, the other class of teachers whose office it is to 
put knowledge derived from others into form, and to train 
the minds of their generations — they too have labored 
long and earnestly in order to fit themselves for their 
work. The conscientious instructor has gone through 
three series of toils ; he has labored hard to learn as he 
would have his scholars labor, he has qualified himself by 
still severer toil for his special duty, and then comes the 
new office of imparting and guiding from day to day — 
the hardest labor of all, because the fruits of it do not at 
once appear. 

Now into the labors of these classes of teachers and 
trainers each new generation of the educated enters. 
You my friends are debtors to the past and indeed to the 
remote past. For you Aristotle thought his best thoughts, 
though they may have taken new shapes before they 
readied your minds ; for you the Greek poets and the 
English of high renown have sung their strains ; for you, 
art has brought to light its treasures ; for you discoverers 
have ventured into untrodden seas — a thousand for- 
gotten names have lived and wrought for your benefit, 
without whom, it may be, society would have been far 



264 The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 

behind its present point of advancement. For you, too, 
the teacher of the present has spent the best hours of his 
life, has thought his best thought, has patiently drilled 
and inculcated, that you may enter into his labors and 
may, if you will, go beyond him in cultivation and in 
wisdom. Small perhaps is the proficiency which you may 
have seemed to yourselves to have made under his 
training, for the natural and one of the best fruits of a 
true education is to reveal to us how little we know, and 
how far we are from the heights of perfect science, But 
perhaps in the years to come, even although the know- 
ledge and power gained here may be indistinguishable 
from that which other masters or yourselves have pro- 
cured for you, you will gratefully attribute something 
of your culture and something of your success to those 
who have labored for you here. They will then, perhaps, 
be beyond the reach of your acknowledgments ; they 
may be little conscious of what they have done for you ; 
they can see but little fruit, of course from the toils of 
each faithfully spent day ; but if it should appear that 
some good thought of theirs was fruitful in your minds, 
some ideal of patient, finished scholarship was awakened 
within you, some solid preparation was given you for the 
work of a true life, then will they deserve to be re- 
membered, and you will be called by such remembrances 
to hand down what they have imparted and whatever else 
you shall have gained by your own labor to the next 
generation. 

II. Other men have labored in the practical spheres of 
life, and we are entered into their labors. Here there 
arise before us all who have labored for the social, politi- 
cal, moral, religious, welfare of man, from the mother, 
into whose hands all the tender beginnings of practical 
life are committed, through every faithful teacher and 
faithful example up to the founders of states, and the 



The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 265 

founders of religion, up, even, to the Lord Jesus Christ 
Himself. 

It is to be observed in regard to these laborers both 
that their work is of all importance, and that it is neces- 
sary for the success of those other laborers who work in 
the fields of science. For life is more than thought, and 
without a well-ordered life there can be little progress in 
thought. Such is the action of the moral nature on the 
mind that a bad soul is unfitted for all the science that is 
directly concerned with life ; it is warped and blinded by 
selfish interests, it often falls into doubt, and is wanting 
in those higher impulses which are of such aid in intel- 
lectual pursuits. Nor is the sway of society over the in- 
dividual less marked. A corrupt society, a vicious gov- 
ernment are uncivilizing agents of the greatest power, not 
merely by their neglect or repression of what is good, 
but by their sympathy with positive evil. And above all 
the other influences rises religion in its power to ennoble 
or to degrade the soul, to fill it with fear and falsehood, 
or to raise it to a communion with God and with His 
thoughts. 

It is to be observed, further, in regard to these laborers 
in the vineyard of life, that their work never ends. The 
results of knowledge stay in the world, but society and 
government are ever changing; religion at one time reigns, 
at another is conquered by doubt or vice, so that there is 
an endless struggle here between the powers of corruption 
and the powers of progress, — a struggle in which the in- 
terests of science also are involved. Had the race been 
good enough to have retained the faint primeval know- 
ledge and faith of God ; had it been able, by reason of its 
moral strength, to have instituted everywhere just societies 
and governments, in sympathy with all truth and good- 
ness ; centuries ago, without question, the point of advance- 
ment which we have now reached would have been left 
out of sight, and a state of mankind have been begun of 
12 



266 The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 

which we only dream almost without hope. The path of 
the reformers, civilizers, purifiers has been up-hill against 
reigning corruptions, against the hankering of man for a 
slothful, unthinking life; in short, against that lapse of 
souls from God for which Christ furnishes the only all- 
sufficient remedy. 

The labors, therefore, of these classes of practical la- 
borers have been greater than of such as encounter the 
difficulties and the mysteries of thought. No philosopher 
ever so toiled to find out or to spread truth, as reformers 
and preachers of righteousness to make the world and the 
soul better. They have begun their work in a sense of 
loneliness and insufficiency; they have held out against 
fear, scorn, and uncertainty ; in the tragic language of the 
Apostle John, they have come to their own and their own 
received them not. Take the example of any of the pio- 
neers of righteousness. Before them lies a life-work, which, 
to beiulfilled, must cross a thousand prejudices, a thousand 
interests ; governments fear them, and are arrayed against 
them ; priesthoods hate them ; they are maligned ; men fear 
to join them ; — who so hated and so despised as the best 
patriots, the best philanthropists, the best friends of God 
and of man. Listen to the complaint of the tender-hearted 
Jeremiah, who preached wrath against wicked prophets 
and wicked politicians : " Woe is me, my mother, that 
thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of conten- 
tion to the whole earth ! I have neither lent on usury, 
nor have men lent to me on usury, yet every one of them 
doth curse me." Or, mark the language of the Apostle 
Paul, in the same strain, only nobler and purer from the 
taint of discontent — " In all things approving ourselves as 
the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in 
necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in 
tumults, in labors" — or where he says, "We are made the 
filth of the world and are the offscouring of all things unto 
this day." Or, let a greater and a holier one teach us 



The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 267 

what immediate reward awaits all who begin the great 
movements of the world : "If tne world hate yon, ye know 
that it hated Me before it hated yon." And although re- 
ligion, as coming most athwart the prejudices and the fsars 
of men encounters the greatest opposition, the same fate 
has been tolerably sure for every true reformer of man- 
kind, — first reproach, calumny, persecution, then death, 
for the patriot by the sword, for the martyr by the flames. 

Is it nothing now to have endured this or the like 
of this? Nothing to have labored against hope 
and against fear, and then to die with the thought 
that the work is just begun ? No one persecutes the phi- 
losopher who speculates on final causes, or constructs a 
theory of the parabola, or experiments on a new gas; 
their labors may be long and trying, but the souls of these 
other laborers, besides all their toil, are harrowed and 
lacerated, so that martyrdom itself may be a positive 
relief. 

And we are entered into their labors. Your studies of 
history, my young friends, will have taught you what 
thanks you owe to the struggles and contests of good men 
in the past, noi need you go back beyond the few last 
years for one of the most striking illustrations. In order 
that a reign of justice in our land should be secured, that 
we should no longer be the reproach of the civilized 
world, as a nation of freemen holding four millions of 
slaves in perpetual bondage and justifying our curse as 
an institution of God, how many hundred thousands have 
given up their lives, and how many cries of mourners have 
resounded through the land. We have gained a precious 
inheritance, precious at its beginning, to be more precioui 
as years roll on, but at what a cost. So also the whole 
history of our land speaks of labor ; of labor the fruits of 
which we are now enjoying. The toil and agony of mind 
which the first pilgrims endured in their separation from 
their homes, in their contests with the wild men and tho 



268 The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 

wilderness, in their want and uncertainty ; the struggles 
and sacrifices of the revolution, — easily read on a few 
pages of history, but hard enough to bear — these have sent 
down to us an inheritance more precious than has fallen to 
any other people. Or if you go farther back and read the 
record of each important addition to English history, of 
every new charter or petition or declaration of right, of 
every resistance against tyranny and every bulwark of 
freedom ; remember that each of these had its contest, its 
patience, and that your acknowledged rights of speech, of 
worship, of secure possession, of a share in the common- 
wealth have cost many lives of men who have left no 
name, many sorrows of the unnoticed, and that thousands 
have been preparing the way for your era of light and 
freedom. Nor are the labors of reformers of less moment. 
You are in a better state of society than fell to the lot of 
your fathers, because divinely gifted men saw what were 
the evils that obstructed human progress, and had cour- 
age and patience enough to oppose them. Some one voice 
perhaps was lifted up amid derision and persecution, some 
one w r orked on hoping against hope, and died committing 
his cause to the few select ones who were as fearless and 
as loving as he. Then by slow degrees the stream 
widened and became a resistless flood to change the face 
of society. The fruits of all this belong to you. But you 
could not have these fruits, gathered by the patriot and 
the reformer, at your command, unless also a higher class 
of laborers in the spiritual field had co-operated with 
them and prepared the way for them. The preacher of 
righteousness and the martyr were the forerunners of free- 
dom and of all improvement in society. The martyr did 
not think, perhaps, when he expressed his devotion to 
Christ by a painful death that any thing great was to 
grow out of it — he only acted out what he felt. But 
these religious laborers have changed the face of the 
world. They have brought into literature and art, new 



The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 269 

ideas of purity and spirituality, into life another standard 
of character, by which all truthfulness, honor, justice and 
benevolence are duly valued. And from them we go 
back to Him in whose cause they taught by word or by 
life — to the great laborer who came not to be ministered 
unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
many. It were easy to show that without Him the labor 
of all others would have served only to prop up decaying 
civilizations, and to supply short enjoyment to unsatisfied 
souls, but that from Him has proceeded the power that 
helps every laborer for man's welfare : all thinkers have 
better thoughts because He came into the world, all 
workers have better ground to stand upon, and better 
hopes. He penetrates beyond the religious, or the moral, 
or the social sphere into all art, science, invention : even 
the science of wealth, the lowest in one respect of the 
sciences, is not below His influence. Such a thing it is to 
have had the Son of God in the world, and to have en- 
tered into His labors. 

What we have said thus far, has served to show the 
dependence of the successive portions of our race upon 
foregoing ages for their means of improvement and the 
relations of the benefactors of mankind among them- 
selves, the thinkers being most indebted to those who 
have moulded life by their works, and of these the 
Founder of our religion with His successors taking the 
lead. 

1. An important reflection occurs here, which is indeed 
involved in what has preceded, that a very great work, 
often the chief work of the best spirits of an age, must be 
to oppose, and seek to destroy the tendencies of the pre- 
ceding one. Sin is ignorance, ungodliness and one-sided- 
ncss: therefore in our race there are perpetual obstacles 
to true progress. These obstacles the age itself may be 
most wedded to, and the spirit of the age can be met only 
by noble, self-sacrificing minds, who shed a new light on 



270 The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 

the world. There are multitudes of these, at whose head 
stands Christ ; and His service to mankind is to be weighed 
not only by what He positively taught but by His sublime 
courage in standing up against the existing forms of evil. 

And so we, if we would have other men enter into our 
labors, must declare against whatever is outward, voluptu- 
ous, unbelieving and godless in our civilization. An edu- 
cated young man in Christendom is bound not to follow 
blindly the lead of the spirit of the time. If there is a 
tendency among us to sink knowledge into a minister of 
pleasure, a caterer to wealth, he must in his practice 
preach the meanness of such a spirit, and the danger of 
putting the lower uses of this life above the higher. If 
there is a tendency to swift, unthinking action without 
meditation enough on principle, he must counteract it by 
the calmness of his soul, by his unshaken fidelity to his 
convictions. If there is a tendency in our thinking to 
exalt law above divine will, and to turn away from what- 
ever claims to be supernatural, he must make up his mind 
on this immense subject, and being persuaded that there 
is divine truth among men, must defend it before the 
world, preaching to men that a civilization without God 
in Christ is a civilization without lofty motives and most 
earthly, hollow and decaying, corrupting to art, morals 
and society. This he must proclaim that others after him 
may enter into the labors of Christ, and of the true ones 
in all ages. 

2. Another reflection which forces itself upon us, is 
that all this labor of successive generations does not pay 
its cost, unless man is an immortal. There are those who 
do not believe this, and who, in a kind of despair, look 
about for something great in lieu of the immortal indi- 
vidual whose light they put out ; accordingly we hear 
much of the immortality of the race and of collective 
humanity. But who told them that the race is immortal? 
If it has lasted through all the seons and has made such 



The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 271 

small advances until now, the prospect is rather dark for 
the future laborer. If it began to exist some few thou- 
sand years ago, it may cease to exist ere long. Who 
knows, unless he has access to some revelation, that a geo- 
logical catastrophe may not sweep this race off, like so 
many others before it, or some conflagration, like that of 
which the Stoics taught, may not consume all things ; or ? 
if the race is to be immortal, what is its value and the 
value of laboring for it, or yet the likelihood of raising 
it up to a state of perfection, when all the motives drawn 
from endless life and from God are gone ? Can a man 
conscious of high capacities, and proud of spirit, con- 
descend to spend his strength to the advantage of these 
bubbles that float awhile and then vanish as they burst? 
To us, it seems that the means of improving the race 
depend on the question of the immortality of the person, 
and that the motive to undertake this work shrinks 
almost to nothing when this immortality is even soberly 
doubted. And above all, after the exalted conceptions of 
redemption and of communion with God had faded out, 
after the grand theatre of immortal life had dwindled 
into a little booth of twigs, would not a paralysis seize on 
every earnest mind? Is not the conclusion a most natural 
one — " let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" ? 

3. There is another reflection of immediate practical 
bearing for each one of us — that we have no reason to 
boast of our knowledge or refinement, for we have entered 
into the labors of others. What we have, we have 
acquired by extraneous help. Why then should we be 
elated, and not rather humbled, because wo have made so 
little use of the help afforded us? Only he can on good 
grounds feel exaltation of mind who is indebted neither 
to man nor to God for his attainments. But where is 
there such a person ? The day laborer is nearest to this 
state of perfect independence, but the hoe and the rako 
which extend his anus, the spade, by which ho applies 



272 The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 

the motions of his foot, are the inventions of distant ages ; 
for the preparation of their materials, for the perfecting 
of their forms, hundreds of men have thought their best 
thoughts and done their best work. And so it is with all 
applications of mechanical power, so it is with all discove- 
ries of principles and their reduction to practice. We 
make our labor profitable by means of the labor of others ; 
their failures save us from failure, their successes are our 
inheritance. Who, in the widest reach of inventions, in 
the boldest triumphs of man over nature, has added a 
tithe to what men accomplished in the times before him ? 
" Other men have labored, and he is entered into their 
labors." 

In the lower regions of work then no one can boast that 
he took his own path ; is it otherwise in the highest ? 
Must not he who has enlarged science, he who has blessed 
the world by his benevolent deeds, he who has refined his 
own mind or character, acknowledge the same depen- 
dence ? For the thoughts which have disciplined such a 
one for his work are the undying thoughts of former 
sages and philanthropists. The examples that animated 
him were set by the wise and good of all ages, and " were 
recorded for his admonition upon whom the ends of the 
world are come." The drama of the world has been 
played for him. Martyrs have bled for him. And more 
than this, if he has been able to consecrate himself to the 
service of God, he knows that he would have remained a 
worldling, but for the diviue grace which came to him in 
his sins and rendered him a man of faith, self-denial and 
execution, which raised his standard of attainment, gave 
him courage and patience, and helped him to do great 
things through a busy life. 

There are two ways in which we can nurse our intellec- 
tual pride and self-conceit; we can compare ourselves with 
others, who are below us, and can imagine that we have 
reached our fancied height alone. The best cure for the 



The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past. 273 

first is to compare ourselves with something higher, above 
all with the infinitude of God ; but we may also compare 
ourselves with the truly great of past ages, and we cannot 
fail to be humbled when we thick how much more they 
have done than we with slenderer preparation, and how 
little the noblest spirits of the world have accomplished 
after all. But another cure ought to be the discovery of 
our dependence. Let us feel that the little we know has 
for the most part come to us at second-hand. We have 
dressed ourselves by the help of the wardrobes of the past. 
We should have been as naked as savages had not the 
poets and sagas, the reformers and men of God met us on 
our way to clothe us in the garments of a Christian civili- 
zation. Not one of them, not one true man ever felt a 
conceit of knowledge. Hear Agassiz' noble words : " I 
have devoted my whole life to the study of nature, and 
yet a single sentence expresses all that I have done. I 
have shown that there is a correspondence between the 
succession of fishes in geological times and the different 
stages of their growth in the egg, this is all." * Such is 
the humility of a comprehensive mind that knows what 
others have done and knows what remains undone. Such 
a mind cares very little what he may have wrought out, 
or who may have deserved the honor of this or that dis- 
covery. He grasps, rather, the whole of the truth within 
his reach, and seeks to make the most of it for mankind. 

4. And thus we are led to our last reflection, that the 
law of our race, which we have been considering, our de- 
pendence on the past, and the hope of progress for the 
future, ought to carry us out of ourselves, to unite us to 
our species and to beget within us sympathy with man. 
"Freely ye have received, freely give," says the Master — 
words which may be applied to all our blessings as Well as 
to that most necessary one proceeding directly from Him. 
Men have lived in the past for us. In a world of igno- 

* Methods of Study in Natural History, p, 23. 

12* 



274 The Debt owed by every Generation to the Past 

ranee, thousands have searched for knowledge as for hid 
treasures, and their labors have blessed us. In a world of 
sin, multitudes have lived and died to lay the foundations 
of order and justice, to reform evils, and to show the path 
to God. Unknown benefactors and teachers, as well as 
known, have handed down to us all that enriches and pu- 
rifies the soul. Is it nothing that we are compassed about 
with so great a cloud of witnesses ? Or is it nothing that 
the destinies of the world are in no small degree depen- 
dent on each new generation ? Or that the success of all 
efforts beyond the field of pure science grows, in a great de- 
gree, out of the motive with which they were begun? Let 
us come, then, into sympathy with the wise and good of 
the past ; let us pay over to others, in a grateful spirit and 
with interest, what we have received ; let our aims in life 
respect the welfare of all. 

And this deserves to be considered for our encourage- 
ment, that every advance makes a new advance easier ; 
every conquest over matter puts it more completely at our 
feet; every correction of social abuses renders thinking 
well and acting well less difficult ; every government, where 
justice and freedom go haftd in hand, spreads its light 
over the world ; every widening of the influence of religion 
makes it seem more like a natural thing that a nation can 
be born in a day. And if the world has made great ad- 
vances in these latter days, and is making them, is there 
not something inspiriting to the laborer in the hope of 
greater and more rapid success, in the hope of success in the 
highest of all causes, — that cause of Christ which includes 
all temporal, as well as spiritual welfare ? " Let us " then 
"not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall 
reap, if we faint not." 



SERMON XIX. 

CHEIST DELIVERING BELIEVERS FROM THIS PRESENT EVIL 
WORLD. 

Galatians i. 4. Who gave Himself for our sins, that He 
might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the 
will of God and our Father. 

The teaching of Scripture in many places is that the 
life and death of Christ were freely chosen by Him in 
the foresight of some great good that was to follow for 
the human race. Hence the expression, "Who gave 
Himself," or, as the Master Himself says, " gave His life 
as a ransom for many." This form of words is repeated 
by Paul, as in the passages, "Who gave Himself as a 
ransom for all," " Who gave Himself for us that He 
might redeem us from all iniquity ; " and, again, Christ 
gave Himself for the church, that " He might sanctify 
and cleanse it." (1 Timothy ii. 6 ; Titus ii. 14 ; Ephe- 
sians v. 26.) 

In our text, then, when it is said that He gave Him- 
self for our sins, or with reference to our sins, His 
self-sacrifice in consenting to die for us is especially in- 
tended. "Who gave Himself," is the same as to say, 
"who willingly gave Himself," up to die. It would 
be wrong, however, to conceive of His sacrifice as con- 
sisting only in His death. The sacrifice, and whatever 
virtue there was in it for procuring our redemption, is 
to be attributed to His whole life and to the purpose 
entertained before He came into the world, as well as 
to His death. His death was the culmination of His 
life, the completion of the purpose ; it was that with- 
out which all that had passed would have been uniin- 

275 



276 Christ Delivering Believers from 

islied ; it was tlie crown of all His actions and of His 
work. It stood forth, therefore, so prominently, that 
whatever He, as a Saviour, procured for man, was as- 
cribed to His death above all, and sometimes to His 
death alone. The act of death, apart from the purpose 
and the self-sacrificing love, was nothing. The purpose, 
had it been a sudden, temporary one, could have been 
of no account. It was the eternal love that led to the 
humiliation, to the cross, to the grave, that gave signifi- 
cance and power to these passing events of time. He 
gave Himself, the Apostle says, /or our sins ; that is, He 
died for our sins. There are two prepositions used in 
the original New Testament — irepi, concerning, and vnip, 
in behalf of — which can hardly be discriminated when 
the subject is the relation of the death of Christ to men 
and to human sin. Both are used of persons in such 
expressions as, He died for us ; where, however, one of 
them, virep, closely approaches the sense of instead of 
without exactly reaching it. Eoth occur, also, in such 
forms of speech as to die for sin ; where, however, the 
sense of nepi is slightly more vague. In the present in- 
stance, we cannot tell from the passage itself whether the 
Apostle explains his words for our sins by that which fol- 
lows — " That He should deliver us from this present evil 
world," or whether he intends by the phrase, for sins, 
the means, and by deliverance from the evil world, the 
end. Other passages, however, of which there are many, 
confirm this last view. The death for sins, in his con- 
ception, was a death procuring forgiveness of sins, estab- 
lishing peace with God and a new relation of believing 
men both to Christ and to the Father. Out of this new 
relation is to proceed the deliverance from the present 
evil world, which is the very end for which forgiveness 
is offered, and without which nothing effectual would 
have been wrought by the death of Christ. 

Let us now Ijok at this rescue or deliverance as the 



this Present Evil World. 277 

principal subject of thought in the verse of our text. 
The world spoken of is the present world ; it is called 
evil, and so, if this word evil has any force, the deliver- 
ance is a moral and spiritual deliverance. A commenta- 
tor of great name translates, instead of the present world, 
the impending world or age — that is, the age of apostasy 
and of the second coming of Christ as a Judge. But 
this is unnecessary and improbable. The word ren- 
dered present is the same which occurs in the passage, 
" Things present and things to come ; " it is used by the 
grammarians to denote the present tense as contrasted 
with the future ; and it is a truly Christian idea, that es- 
cape from present sin and present corruption was offered 
by our Lord in His Gospel and made possible for us by 
His death. For, as the Apostle says, in another place, 
" He gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from 
all iniquity." 

But what is meant by the ivorld, and in what sense is 
it an evil world ? There are two words used in the New 
Testament where we find world in our translation. One 
(/cooyxos) makes prominent the order or system of things 
as it exists in space, the other (alwv) the course or flow of 
events in time. The two words, as denoting men, the 
inhabitants of the earth or world, in their present con- 
dition of estrangement from God as to their feelings, 
habits, character, in the world and in the ages of time, 
are used indiscriminately. In one or two instances the 
word ou'ooi/ is made to signify the material creation ; the 
Koo-/xos, just as our word world, which at first denoted an 
age of men, has come steadily to have the signification 
of the material earth or universe. 

We see from this exposition how and why the world 
is called evil. If Christ or His apostles have taught that 
in the order of created things evil is inherent, that this 
visible world is essentially a vile and corrupt place, owing 
to its material elements, they would have given sanction 



2TS Christ Delivering Believers from 

to the Gnostic doctrine that God, the supreme and the 
pure, is not the maker of heaven and earth, but that 
some other being made them, who is essentially imper- 
fect. Thus Christian morality would have coincided 
with that ascetical system that has done so much mis- 
chief in the world, by teaching that escape from evil 
consists in extinction of desire, in abstinence from all 
that gratifies the senses, seclusion from society and ab- 
sorption in contemplation of the Godhead. In this way 
we should have had a Christianity which was unfit for 
the mass of mankind, and which had the seeds of death 
in itself. Certainly, this was not the view of the world 
which He took who said, " I pray not that thou 
shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou 
shouldesfc keep them from evil." The material world 
was to Him a beautiful and glorious place, full of mani- 
festations of the Father, full of expressions of Divine 
care for men, full of influences to kindle the soul into 
wonder, praise, and delight. If there was a time when 
asceticism came into the Christian church, if much of the 
piety of the Middle Ages was one-sided and monkish, 
the tendency to this came from heathen philosophy and 
not from the Gospel. 

To the follower of Christ, then, the world, as contin- 
ued by its Great Maker, in its structure, its sights and 
sounds, its influences on the soul, cannot appear to be 
evil. The present creation, though it may have fallen, 
with man, from a more perfect beauty that once be- 
longed to it, is only good, just as it was at the first, 
"when God saw everything that He had made and, be- 
hold, it was very good." The sky and clouds are good, 
although sometimes monotonous rain-clouds cover the 
face of the heavens. The earth, with its mountains and 
valleys, its carpet of flowers, its running streams and 
broad oceans, is good, although swamps and deserts 
and winter remind us that its beauties do not rise to 



this Present Evil World. 279 

perfection, nor can I see what can possibly make a Chris- 
tian look on the outer world without joy, when, besides 
having the same sources of pleasure in it which others 
find, he sees a God and a Father reflected from the 
whole universe. 

It has been sometimes said that the great seriousness 
which Christianity throws into life, the pressure upon 
the Christian mind of an unseen world and of the great 
thoughts of trial and of duty, ought naturally to call 
him away from things outward and visible. He may be 
compared to the soldier just before battle. What lei- 
sure has he for the music of the birds and the sweet 
forms of flowers, when victory and death are close at 
hand ? Or he ma}' be compared to the man just ready 
to embark on a vessel, whose thoughts are turned away 
from the beautiful outline of the coast, or the floating 
clouds, and fastened on the great, immeasurable ocean. 
And so it is said that the culture springing from the 
world and from life, the refinement of the taste and sen- 
sibility to things beautiful, are not encouraged by Chris- 
tianity. Its influences are one-sidedly moral ; it is im- 
perfect, when alone, as a discipline for man. Some of 
the early Christians showed this defect ; the stricter re- 
ligionists since have shown it. They have looked on 
the world as evil. 

In my apprehension this charge has no true founda- 
tion. The Gospel aims to cultivate our nature, not to 
turn it into another nature. And this it tries to effect 
by bringing the most inspiring, elevating motives to 
bear on our life and character. Is it possible that the 
love, and peace, and purity, which arc the legitimate re- 
sult of its unimpeded action, should move our nature off 
from its hinges ? Do not such states of mind promote 
the healthy development of men in all that is human and 
manly, putting them in their right attitudes toward ono 
another and giving them their duo proportions and in- 



280 Christ Delivering Believers from 

fluences ? It is, indeed, impossible, by the agency of the 
Gospel or by any other process, to create imagination where 
it is wanting, or to make a coarse-grained or essentially 
narrow mind fine or broad. But, setting the differences 
of men aside, the Gospel has often awakened the slum- 
bering seeds of feeling,' the love of beauty or power of 
thought which lay dormant before, and it puts the soul 
in the best position to receive all the good, all the soft- 
ening influences which God appointed for it in its edu- 
cation in this present world. 

This also, is to be observed — that if, at any time, the 
world of men, the corruption of society, has compelled 
Christians to stand aloof from it in order to live outside 
of the falsehoods and snares of life, such a force on them 
has been, though undesirable in itself, yet on the whole 
good. When the leaven of the Gospel was just hid in 
the three bushels of meal, everything was corrupt. Art 
in all its forms catered to heathenish voluptuousness ; 
obscene mythologies offended, or tended to deprave, the 
Christian's new taste — what could he do, in such an age, 
but live within the society of his fellow-believers, going 
out of it only to do good ? He was like a vessel in a 
storm, that saves its more precious freight by throwing 
overboard the less valuable. That was a necessity of an 
age. But a purified society, when it came, would impose 
new duties on the believer, and would bid him take a 
less suspicious and cautious attitude toward the world ; 
and if, hereafter, in an age of general unbelief and of 
luxury, the old story of heathen society should be re- 
peated, Christians would again have to withdraw from 
the world in a measure, as we withdraw from infectious 
diseases, unless we are especially intrusted with their 
cure. 

How unlike Christ's Gospel is, in its view of the pres- 
ent evil world, to the religions which have swayed and 
pressed upon the souls of the great Hindoo race. To 



this Present Evil World. 281 

them the world was filled with illusions ; personal exist- 
ence was an evil ; the soul was on an almost endless 
transit from one form of life to another ; the great goal 
afar off was absorption in the supreme essence ; and self- 
torture was a means to this consummation. So dreary- 
did this religion of Brahminism become, that the atheism 
and extinction promised by Buddhism became a positive 
blessing. 

This present evil world, then, is such as man has made 
it, not such as God made it. There is evil here, but it 
is evil which free minds have introduced and perpetu- 
ated. The very essential doctrine of Christianity is, 
that God made His revelation and sent His Son to stem 
and abridge this evil. Here we may see two thoughts 
in the text. First, it is a present evil world as contrasted 
with a future and an unseen world. The presence of 
evil in a visible form, in a society oi men whom we can- 
not avoid and from whom we ought not to withdraw, if 
we would, gives to it its principal power. The world is 
taken possession of by this evil, so that, to the eye of the 
Apostle, evil seemed to be organized under a great intel- 
ligence, acting on a prearranged and well-considered 
plan. The good which resists this evil, on the other 
hand, is spiritual and distant ; there is a conflict between 
forces that draw their power from unseen realities and 
forces that have the senses and our temporal state and 
human opinion on their side. The spiritual good gives 
promises of enjoyment and of excellence which we have 
not experienced, while the present evil in the world 
offers enjoyment of which we know the nature. If tho 
contest were altered, if Christ's blessings were all pos- 
sessions in hand — good things recognized and prized by 
men — oh, how much easier would the victory be ! In 
that case, we should not need much aid from Christ for 
the taking of us out of this present evil condition of 
mankind. 



282 Christ Delivering Believers from 

Let us next, for a moment, look at the nature of the 
evil of the world. It is, first, evil mixed with good, 
founded on desires and principles which, but for sin in 
the world, would lead only to good. Hence, it is insid- 
ious. We scarce know what excess i's, where we must 
stop, how far we may venture. We have for all this no 
exact rules, and can have none. Every moral "being, 
everyone who wishes to lead an honorable and perfect 
life, must judge for himself in applying those universal 
laws of action which his nature and the Divine Word 
reveal to him. Hence there is room for all kinds of 
biasses, for sophistical immorality taking the place of 
morality, for a casuistry like that of the Jesuits, for 
sceptical uncertainty which will strike the balance against 
the soul's true welfare. Herein lies a great part of our 
danger, that the judge within is blinded and misguided 
by the evil without, so that the decisions in the court of 
conscience are iniquitous. 

Again, there is an unrighteous sway, even a terror, over 
us, wielded by the evil or defective opinions of society. 
If the apostles opposed a false religion, they who wanted 
just that kind of religion which appeases the conscience 
and suits a feeble religious sense, became their enemies. 
If men now, under the light of Christianity, for good or 
bad reasons, oppose customs as being evil, they are ridi- 
culed or denounced. The public voice grows stronger 
with increased intelligence, but not necessarily more 
righteous or more holy. A great deal of strength must 
be put, in many societies, upon the effort to stand alone ; 
and this is so difficult that moral courage is considered 
to be a great quality. Wo may say that, with all the 
purifying influences of Christianity on the public mind, 
Heaven is as far off from the most of men as if they were 
heathen, or there were no Heaven. How could it be, 
then, that stores of false maxims should not be treasured 
up, justifications of easy virtue against the frowns of 



this Present Evil World. 283 

rigid virtue, pleas for enjoyment and comfort when 
struggle is called for — fitted to help men along on the 
way of the world, and to deter nobler minds from follow- 
ing their best impulses drawn from Christ's Gospel ? 

Or it may be that a peculiarity of an age of the world 
consists in a decay of faith, an atmosphere of doubt 
which seems to act on the minds of men without their 
being conscious of it. Such periods of doubt occur in 
revolutions of opinion, when some new form of phi- 
losophy or of knowledge becomes prominent. The old 
forms of thought or the old thinking is no longer re- 
spected, and the shapes of doctrine must be recast, if not 
cast away. In the agitations of such an evil age, faith, 
if it have not a solid anchor in the practical convictions 
of the soul, appears to be a thing of the air ; and feeble 
Christians totter and tremble, as if the earth itself were 
quaking. In the light of Scripture this is, indeed, present 
evil, for it destroys the power of motives and deadens 
the religious nature. 

I will speak of but one other characteristic of the evil 
that may be in the world ; it is the accumulation of ob- 
jects to gratify the desires, and even those desires ivhich 
may be called voluptuous. In a simple condition of 
society, where there is little wealth and little division 
of labor, this is not the predominant evil. Thus, early 
Kome — and the same is true of almost all simple socie- 
ties — was outwardly virtuous, reverential, law-abiding, for 
some generations, only to fall into the grossest condi- 
tion, at the decline of the Republic and through the Em- 
pire, when all the vices in a mingled stream seemed to 
be overflowing mankind. The Apostle saw this ; he saw 
the same decay of good habits in the Greek countries 
which he traversed ; he might, if alive now, see it at 
Paris ; he might see the inroads of thoroughly worldly 
enjoyment among us. Society ruins itself in such a 
decline, and needs frightful judgments, wide-sweeping 



284: Christ Delivering Believers from 

changes, to make society endurable. All this enervating, 
voluptuous influence must act on every member of so- 
ciety, unless he fights against it and forms himself, by 
the conflict, into a heroic character. 

All this philosophers have felt, as well as Christians. 
There is a celebrated passage in one of Plato's works, 
where he uses language something like the Apostle's : 
"Evils," says Socrates (in Thesetetus, 176, a. b.), "can 
never perish ; for there must always remain something 
which is antagonistic to good. Of necessity they hover 
around this mortal sphere and the earthly nature, having 
no place among the gods in heaven. Wherefore, also, 
we ought to fly away thither ; and to fly thither is to 
become like God, as far as this is possible ; and to be- 
come like Him is to become holy, just, and wise." 

Plato saw the evil, and longed for a deliverance, and 
looked to wisdom and to the inspiration of moral beauty 
as the best means which he could offer. We look on 
him as one of the noblest of men, but we have a bet- 
ter guide — even Him who said, " I pray not that thou 
shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou 
shouldest keep them from the evil." His prayer was 
fulfilled. God has rescued many from the power of 
darkness and brought them into the kingdom of His 
dear Son. 

This rescue was accomplished by Christ, says the 
Apostle, in His giving Himself for us. Let us look, for 
a moment, at this initial step, and at the other steps of 
the progress until the believer in Christ is taken out of 
the evil course of human life. 

The first step is the offer of forgiveness of sins, which 
is procured, according to the uniform testimony of 
Scripture, by the death of Christ. This is an offer which 
they only can accept who condemn themselves on ac- 
count of sin, who take the same view in substance which 
God and Christ take of it, and who regard deliverance 



this Present Evil World. 285 

from inward evil as a supremely desirable good. It is 
not necessary that they should be enabled to explain 
exactly how forgiveness of sin is connected with the 
death of Christ ; but it is necessary, for all future influ- 
ences of Christ and of truth on their souls, that they 
should believe in the reality of the hopes which He 
offers — that they are brought through Him into the new 
relation of children of God, that the hope of a final and 
entire deliverance from sin will be no empty, no idle 
hope ; that they may look with assurance to Him for all 
needed supplies of spiritual help. Without this assur- 
ance of receiving pardon and help the sense of sin 
would be a paralysis of the soul's active powers ; and 
there would be, after a few fruitless efforts, a despair 
of making progress toward a holy and a perfect life. 
Christ's disclosure of the evil of sin would then have 
been only a ministry of wrath and of death. 

Secondly, the soul is thus opened to all the genial 
motives which must act upon it in order that it may be 
delivered from the evil that is in the world. The con- 
ception of a perfect life, the love of God as manifested 
in the Christian plan of salvation, the life and work of 
Christ Himself, which not only reveals the best life, but 
reveals also the desire of God that our lives should bo 
after Christ's pattern — such motives can act upon us now 
to lead us on to victory over evil. We walk now by 
faith, for faith is such an impression, derived from 
Christ's Gospel, as makes it all to be incorporated and 
realized in our lives. We live, yet not we, but Christ 
liveth in us. 

Once more, the evil of the world is, to a considerable 
extent, an excess of good. Desire may not be bad in 
itself, yet a large amount of the corruption in the world 
comes from inordinate desire. How shall we know 
when it is inordinato ? How shall we steer safely be- 
tween worldly corruption and ascetic practice? No 



286 Christ Delivering Believers from 

philosopher can tell us, no system of ethics can pre- 
scribe beforehand for all future nice questions of prac- 
tice. If the} 7 could, a large part of the discipline, and 
healthy influence of earthly trials would be taken away. 
But what rules cannot do — which we will neglect to apply 
faithfully at the moment of temptation — the light from 
the Lord and the Spirit may accomplish. We shall then 
have a pure standard of life and character — a model 
distinct and full, which, when positive precepts fail and 
precedents are wanting, can lead us the right way. We 
shall thus be helped to have pure intentions, and be 
thus kept free from all inward biasses. We shall be 
eucouraged, and prepared to take our own chosen way 
— alone, if need be. We shall have, too, the helping 
presence of the Divine Spirit, who can teach by a hint 
or an impression, better than an earthly master by col- 
lected stores of transmitted wisdom. 

Finally, the closing words of our text assure us that 
all this which we have considered is no plan for the im- 
provement of mankind as merely living on the earth, 
but for the renewal of the world and as an ultimate de- 
liverance of men from sin, through Christ. 

And Christ's giving of Himself for our sins, and His 
purpose, in so doing, to deliver us from the present evil 
world, took place according to the mill of God and our 
Father. We do not owe our salvation to an impulse, a 
temporary movement in the mind of Christ, or to cir- 
cumstances which awoke in a benevolent heart an oppo- 
sition to the hypocrisy and covetousness of His day. 
There are persons who admire particular acts of hero- 
ism suddenly prompted, but have no eyes to follow and 
understand a life steadily flowing on in one full, broad 
channel from its beginning to its close. We are taught 
by this high example, that a life thought out beforehand, 
carried through to the end according to one plan, is a 
life nearest to the life of God. And this purpose, this 



this Present Evil World. 287 

self-sacrifice in Christ, had their source in the will of 
God. Great as Christ might seem to us, when meas- 
ured by His more than human excellence, how small and 
poor His work would seem if it had not originated in 
God. When this is taken into account, when the slowly 
unfolding plan of God brings Christ into the evil world 
and to the cross, when God and Christ are seen to be 
acting in perfect harmony of will, then a glory is thrown 
round the work of Christ which gives it its world-im- 
portance. " He was ordained before the foundation of 
the world, but was manifested in these last times." The 
fulness of time came when everything was ripe for His 
appearance, when He stood before the Father and said, 
" Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." 

It was the plan, also, not only of God, but of our 
Father — a plan of love, not of judgment. In Christ He 
made Himself a Father over again ; He tied anew the 
cord which our sin had broken. Christ is our peace, 
and through Him we all can have the same access by one 
Spirit unto the Father. 



SERMON XX. 

SELF-SACRIFICE. 

John xii. 24, 25. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn 
of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone : but if it 
die, it bringeth forth much fruit. 

When a wheat-corn is placed, like a dead body, beneath 
the surface of the soil, a part of it dies or is decomposed 
by the influence of moisture, and thus supplies the vital 
nucleus of the plant with nutriment. If the seed is kept 
from moisture, so that the outer portion cannot swell, 
burst its membrane, separate, and decay, it may abide 
alone or remain such as it now is for a very long period. 
Grains of wheat have been found, it is said, in the wrap- 
pings of Egyptian mummies, which were deposited four 
thousand years ago, but which, when once they could 
decay beneath the influences of earth and water, are said 
to have showed that their power of germination was still 
preserved. If one of these kernels of wheat, instead of 
thus " abiding alone," had been buried in the soil in 
order to bear fruit, and the like had taken place as to 
the series of grains reproduced after successive seasons, 
the world's surface, hundreds and thousands of years ago, 
might have been covered with golden crops derived from 
one parent seed. So true is it that, " Except a corn of 
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but 
if it die, it beareth much fruit." 

Our Divine Master's soul was alive to the beautiful and 
instructive analogies between the natural and the moral 
world ; but this occasion, when He illustrated heavenly 
truth by this striking comparison, was one of more than 
ordinary interest, because it reveals to us His feelings in 

288 



Self-Sacrifice. 289 

regard to Himself and His work when He was aroused in- 
to peculiar fervor. The Apostles Andrew and Philip had 
approached Him on the part of certain Greeks, who had 
come to worship at the feast, with the request that they 
might be introduced to Him of whom, no doubt, they 
had heard much. It is probable, since Greek Jews are 
called Hellenists and not Greeks in the New Testament, 
that these persons were proselytes of the gate from 
among the nations where the Greek tongue was then 
spoken. As they had been won over from heathenism 
into acceptance of the Mosaic religion, they seem to have 
awakened in the prophetic soul of Christ the conception 
of a time when the heathen world would flock to His 
spiritual standard, and the prince of this world would 
be cast out from his kingdom. The next associated 
thought was the means for such a great and fruitful re- 
sult, which was no other than His death. The person 
thus waited on by men from strange lands would, in a 
very few days, be hanging on a cross, under condemna- 
tion as a malefactor. But His death and burial, so far 
from destroying His cause, were to become the life of 
the world ; and the same in substance holds good of 
those who will follow Him. Just as the seed committed 
to the earth suffers a separation of its parts and is buried 
before it can germinate, so man must, in a spiritual sense, 
pass through death before he can truly live and be to 
others a source of life. If he abideth alone, he is un- 
fruitful ; but if he die, he bringeth forth much fruit. 
"He that loveth his life," and shrinks from dying, " shall 
lose it ; but he that hateth his life shall keep it unto life 
eternal. " 

Thus, as I understand this text, does the Saviour pass 
from His own special case to that general law of moral 
action of which His life was a perfect illustration. But 
what law of moral action is intended ? What did our 
Lord mean by dying and bearing fruit — the opposito 



290 Self-Sacrifice. 

to living and abiding alone ? This is the first topic to 
which I direct your attention. 

It is not a fact, merely, that is intended. Before our 
Lord's mind, no doubt, lay a fact, and one soon to be 
made real in His own case. But His words comprehend 
far more than those exceptional cases when it lies within 
our choice to endure or avoid death for some noble end. 
There is no virtue in the mere extinction of being, nor 
is there anything in a death growing out of certain 
principles, which the spirit of the man did not before 
contain in itself. If, of two men, one confessed unto 
death, and another was respited at the funeral pyre amid 
the flames, both had the martyr's spirit. The man who 
actually died may have borne the more fruit, but the 
other had the same " generative and seminal goodness," 
as Lord Bacon expresses it — the same hind of power to 
meet the great crises that arise in life, and through that 
power to influence the world. And so there are those 
who die daily, as the Apostle Paul did. There are un- 
noticed, unknown Christians, like Macduff s wife in 
"Macbeth," who, 

" Oftener upon her knees than on her feet, 
Died every day she lived." 

It is, then, a spirit or character which the Lord in- 
tends in the words of our text — a spirit which must 
show its energy in action, if it burn at all in the soul. 
It is something far above the imagination of great and 
noble conduct, for it leads through the effective prefer- 
ence of the will to noble conduct itself. There are 
minds, alive to the morally sublime and to beauty in 
character, which may seem to be inhabited by this spirit 
because they dilate with joy at the sight or the concep- 
tion of generous, self-forgetting love. And yet they 
may be as incapable of exhibiting this spirit in practice 
as the man of taste may be incapable of executing some 



Self-Sacrifice. 291 

statue or painting, while lie kindles with admiration of 
its beauties. Mere barren sentiment, which ha3 not 
mastered the man, which lives only as a feeling and 
leaves the throne of the soul to other principles, is a 
most worthless thing— no more worthy to be praised in 
the guise of a generosity which conceives of some great 
action never to be performed than in the guise of a dead 
sympathy which mourns over suffering in a remote 
place and leaves that which is close at hand unrelieved. 
Such sentiment serves rather to condemn the man who 
feels himself capable of lofty emotions, for it shows a 
foundation in his nature for something good which he 
has never built upon. It were well, too, if he do not 
excuse himself for not acting out what he approves by 
the fancy that there is some virtue in his barren, lifeless 
emotion. 

And, again, the spirit of which the Saviour speaks is 
not a stormy, impetuous movement of the soul, but a calm 
and constant flame. It is important to remember that 
enthusiasm of the right kind — all feeling which is the 
foundation of heroic deeds— comes not forth at once in 
a gust of passion that consumes the energies for a time, 
but rather wells up, like a noiseless spring beneath a 
rock, seldom turbid and never dry. It has that property 
of tranquillity which enters into the highest kind of 
grandeur, both in the operations of nature and in human 
conduct. This quiet enthusiasm is also the only effec- 
tive spirit for high deeds. Men who rushed to the stake 
in fervent zeal to confess Christ often quailed and re- 
canted when they felt the flames devouring their flesh ; 
while retired, unnoticed Christians, who had cherished 
aspirations of love to Christ in silence — even weak 
women and girls — passed through the scenes of iiery 
trial without being appalled, until the martyr's crown 
fell upon their heads. And the reason why this calm 
spirit is so efficacious is, that it is allied to the deep 



292 Self-Sacrifice. 

convictions of the reason and the spiritural nature, to 
convictions which cannot be unseated or overthrown by 
fear or by any of the lower affections, when they sweep 
over the soul like a storm. These convictions control 
the will, and prepare the man for hard struggles in any 
crisis. They make no show, as if they were doing some 
great thing. The mind, under their sway, is too much 
engrossed in the end before it to analyze itself and 
become aware of its own greatness ; what is achieved 
may seem small to itself, and the indwelling power of 
achievement may seem small. It is only others, as they 
look on the race run by one so animated, that can esti- 
mate the strength put forth and the energy of the un- 
seen principle. 

This quiet, energetic, life-governing principle is no other 
than the spirit of Christian self-sacrifice, as opposed 
to the self-indulgent or self -loving spirit which clings 
to this life and its enjoyments. Let us now proceed to 
reflect what is involved in this spirit, w r hat are some of 
those convictions and feelings which attend on it, and 
help its power. 

1. Tlie spirit of self-sacrifice involves, then, in the first 
place, a right estimate of this life and of the life to come. 
If there were no future life, or no knowledge of any, 
how narrow would be the sphere of motives and of 
actions ; how small would man appear to himself ; how 
unworthy of his soul the very highest ends of living 
that he could find. There might be, indeed, even then, 
some of that self-sacrifice which has an instinctive nat- 
ure ; maternal love might be as self-forgetting, and as 
brave in sustaining peril for a child in heathen lands as 
in lands enlightened by faith in an immortal life. But 
most of that self-sacrifice which is built on the convic- 
tions of reason would then be scarcely possible. The 
little good to be effected, the few moments of time for 
that good to last, and the consideration that immediate 



Sdf-Saerifioe. 293 

results and earthly happiness were the only realities, 
would give to this world and to sensual delights a mag- 
nitude which scarcely any soul, however nobly endowed, 
would fail to acknowledge. But when a life to come is 
received and welcomed, a new set of motives can act 
upon human nature. Instantly there flashes up in the 
soul a conviction that life has more meaning than be- 
fore ; that it is worth while to consider how a man ought 
to live, and worth while to rise above the condition of 
a mere worldling. The new motives oppose sloth and 
sensuality, pride and all manner of selfishness. It now 
appears to be a noble thing to live in hardship, or to die, 
if thus good can be planted for endless life. This life 
on earth becomes less worthy of our love — nay, in the 
emphatic language of the Saviour, it seems fit to be 
hated when weighed in the balances against life eternal, 
and when considered as an enemy of the highest good 
of others and of the highest perfection of the soul. 
Thus faith in a life to come gives free room to the im- 
pulses of self-denial and of self-sacrifice ; because there 
is now an object worthy of them, and an existence in 
which they will contribute to the perfection of our be- 
ing. The souls that act, and the souls that are benefited 
have both become great magnitudes — the theatre is en- 
larged, and the plot is equal to the powers of the actors. 

2. And, again, the spirit of self-sacrifice includes a con- 
viction that the ends of living which terminate here below 
and those which lie in eternity, if they are supreme ends, 
are incompatible. 

If it were possible to secure all the ends of life which 
human nature can propose to itself — if, for instance, a 
man could at once be a sensual, an intellectual, a moral, 
and a heavenly man, there would be no call for self- 
sacrifice ; life would flow along in the change from one 
kind of enjoyment to another without struggle or con- 
fusion ; like a brook sliding along in its natural bed. 



294 Self-Sacrifice. 

That the free indulgence of all desires alike is impossible 
all men know ; they know that a man cannot give him- 
self up to ease, sensuality, the acquisition of wealth, and 
the pursuit of knowledge at once. There must be, they 
feel, some choice between different sources of temporal 
enjoyment, and therefore a repression of one desire in 
favor of another. But the spirit of self-sacrifice extends 
this dictate of experience so as to include the whole class 
of earthly ends, however refined, and however honored. 
It is not merely sensual ends, or money-making ends, 
which it feels to be base, when they are supreme, but all 
merely earthly ends are so also. There is no difference 
in kind between earthly desires, however their shades 
may vary. One general color runs through them all. 

I look on this as a point of great importance to be 
impressed on all persons of refinement. Their tone of 
character may have been so elevated by intercourse with 
whatever is pure and noble that they look down with 
abhorrence on a life of sensual indulgence, and with con- 
tempt on one in which wealth is the supreme object of 
desire. But let them conceive of a man with every com- 
fort about him and every elegance, who gives himself up 
to the study of nature, art, and science. He is alive to 
all that is beautiful and great ; to the enjoyment of his 
thirst for knowledge he devotes his life, with only so 
much sympathy for man and desire for his improvement 
as a mind of such culture can scarcely fail to feel. He 
has succeeded in his efforts to improve himself so far as 
to have grown into a beautiful work of art himself ; every 
unseemly excrescence has been smoothed off, and his 
nature is brought — its spiritual part excepted — into a 
complete harmony. Is not such a one as this — is not 
the perfect man, after a merely earthly standard, so at- 
tractive to most educated minds that they would will- 
ingly be like him, even at the expense of checking all the 
higher moral aspirations ? 



Self- Sacrifice. 295 

But the spirit of self-sacrifice discerns that such an 
elegant life, without any end or aim beyond what is con- 
tained in the life itself, is unworthy of a man, and must 
be renounced by the man inspired by higher motives. 
There is in such a life no moral beauty and no moral 
glory. A man of the most refined taste, but with the 
finest moral sensibilities superadded, as he looks at such 
a man, can entertain no respect or love for him, but must 
rather feel that, beautiful as he is, he is made of a 
crumbling material and on a reduced scale. He is 
formed for nothing great, and capable of nothing great. 
The meanest person in whose soul is the power of self- 
sacrifice — the least in the kingdom of Heaven, is greater 
than he. 

3. Again, thirdly, the spirit of self-sacrifice implies a 
choice to die to this world. There are some who look at 
the comparative value of this life and of the life to come 
with a certain degree of justness, and who feel that the 
higher and lower ends of living are irreconcilable, but 
yet have never allowed considerations drawn from the 
higher principles to act on the heart and life. They 
dread giving their affections and choices to a cause de- 
manding self-sacrifice, lest they should be stripped of 
good at hand, and be driven out to sea, as it were, with 
the danger of being shipwrecked in a vain chase after 
happiness as yet unfound. If they admire the beauty of 
a self-renouncing life, and are pricked by the stings of 
duty, they make, or strive to make, a compromise. The 
full-sized picture of a life-like Christ is too stern and 
severe for them to place directly before their eyes. Self- 
sacrifice, instead of appearing to them as a free and glad 
movement of soul, presents itself as an immolation, 
through which nature passed with nothing but pangs 
and groans, or as an annihilation, from which nature 
shrinks back. 

The bpirit of self-sacrifice, on the other hand, belongs 



296 Self-Sacrifice. 

only to those wliose free choice has decided in favor of 
such a life as Christ's — who have now no hesitation, on 
the whole, what course to take. If once it cost them a 
long struggle to resolve, the die is now cast ; there is no 
reconsidering of arguments, no balancing of motives. 
They have an unchangeable feeling that their decision is 
true, and open to no further question. If in making this 
choice they have renounced any prospect or hope in life, 
the renunciation is for all time. They are no more in- 
clined to retrace their steps, and return to forsaken en- 
joyments, than sailors incline to retrace their course, and 
to collect what was thrown overboard when they light- 
ened the vessel in the storm. A choice so comprehen- 
sive, so solemn, made in full view of considerations such 
as determined them, is apart of their being. It depends 
on convictions of the excellence and on impressions of 
the transcendent beauty of such a life, which are inefface- 
able ; which no time nor suffering can wear out ; which 
must survive death, if there be anything immortal. 

4 I mention one more characteristic of the spirit of 
self-sacrifice — that it implies union with God and sym- 
pathy icith man. In other words, it is the opposite of 
that spirit which abideth alone. The spirit that clings to 
this life in all its forms is a lonely spirit. If you look 
away from the relations of family companionship and 
society into which nature throws men, all the voluntary 
movements of this spirit tend to detach a man from his 
kind — much more from his God — and oppose that system 
of moral attraction in which He is the centre and around 
which all moral beings move in harmony. Look at the 
greater part of the selfish emotions — with what dreadful 
power do they concentrate thought and energy upon 
personal interests. How terribly will fear and suspicion 
sacrifice every object which they meet in their way. 
How pride freezes the heart, and renders it inacces- 
sible. How the love of power, of gain, and of fame, 



Self-Sacrifice, 297 

pull down everything pertaining to others, that they may 
obtain what they seek. The social principles in man, 
such as sympathy and love, are extinguished or greatly 
weakened by these selfish emotions, and form no lead- 
ing part of the character of him who loveth himself 
alone. 

The refined and overwrought man of the world, whom 
we just now mentioned, is not exempt from this charge 
of abiding alone. His very life is adopted in the inten- 
tion of living for himself, and not for mankind. If 
measured by the strength of his selfishness, he must 
sink below even many a victim of sensuality and many a 
votary of gain. What is it to him that there are a thou- 
sand forms of misery to be relieved and abuses to be re- 
moved, and that there is a world of sin in which a man 
must act for God or against Him? When he lives aloof 
from those objects that disturb his tranquillity or offend 
his taste, when he lives away from the grossness and 
ignorance of men, in companionship with the choicest 
minds of the past, he has no real sympathy for man or 
power of pouring himself out in acts of love, no desire to 
imitate the Son of God, no susceptibility to the sublime 
in conduct and character. He lives alone even in the 
centre of an admiring circle, where he gives and receives 
the pleasures of a refined intercourse. The willingness 
to die is not in him, and therefore his life must be soli- 
tary. He must abide alone, must remain separate from 
the blessed community of minds that feel and think and 
rejoice together. 

To the community of minds, on the other hand, the 
man of self-sacrifice belongs. Having returned from 
that lonely state of sin, in which all to him was darkness 
and unrest, he has entered into fellowship with God ; and 
he rejoices to see God's designs fulfilled, and His creat- 
ures combined for His glory. He is now in fellowship 
with Christ, as a member of His body and a partaker of 



298 Self-Sacrifice. 

His grace ; and is assured that Christ is full of sympathy 
for him. He is a fellow- citizen with the saints in the com- 
monwealth of love. He has a soul which is alive with 
feeling for man ; he is bound by living cords, not only to 
all who have a life like his own, but even to those who 
are dead and unable to reciprocate affection. His sym- 
pathies are large and generous ; not restricted to one 
form of doing good, running in one channel, nor shut up 
within the bounds of sect or country, but free and all- 
embracing as the air. He is, in short, an image of God, 
a luminary like Him, obedient to the law of love. 

Such are some of the characteristics of self-sacrifice — 
that it passes a true judgment upon this life now pres- 
ent and on the future ; that it feels an earthly life and 
a life on higher principles to be incompatible ; that it 
has chosen to die to this world ; and that it is united in 
love and by sympathy with God and all godly men. Let 
me now call your attention to the other principal thought 
in the text — that such a life is a fruitful one. If a corn 
of wheat fall into the ground and die, it bringeth forth 
much fruit. If a man hateth his life in this world, he 
shall keep it unto life eternal. 

1. In illustration of this truth, I remark, in the first 
place, that, in the choice between different objects of 
earthly desire, the renunciation of a lower for a higher 
object of desire is fruitful. It has already been said 
that such an inferior sort of self-sacrifice must be passed 
through even on worldly priuciples. If a man would be 
rich, he cannot be sensual ; if learned, he cannot gener- 
ally become rich. Is it necessary to say that this choice 
between gratifying higher and lower desires cannot fail 
to be fruitful ? It is fruitful in relation to mankind, for, 
apart from his positive efforts to do direct good to 
others, he who withdraws himself from grovelling pur- 
suits raises his testimony against them as worthless, and 



Self-Sacrifice. 299 

may, by his knowledge or skill, be a benefactor on the 
highest scale to the human race. It is fruitful in rela- 
tion to himself for he is withdrawn by a choice of su- 
perior objects from contact with what is debasing ; he 
has a genuine, if not the highest kind of enjoyment ; he is 
brought into fellowship with truth ; and he may thus be 
in preparation for the reign of spiritual truth and of Di- 
vine love in his soul. On the other hand, the choice of 
the worse source of enjoyment would render him a foe 
to man, and make his spiritual death final. 

May we not argue from this analogy that the spirit of 
self-sacrifice must be fruitful ? If the love of knowledge 
and of truth, pursued to the renunciation of less valuable 
things, sows the seeds of good, although not having at- 
tained itself to the nature of true goodness — must not 
the free choice to live for God and for man, in the re- 
nunciation of merely selfish interests, be positively and 
greatly fruitful? 

2. I remark, in the second place, that no great cause 
ever bore fruit without self-sacrifice. 

Take the cause of physical science for an example. 
What struggles of the day-laborer to lift heavy blocks 
of stone are to be compared with the anxious, sleepless 
toil by which single laws, like Kepler's, have been dis- 
covered ? Look at the botanist exploring a new country, 
as many have done, wading through swamps, encounter- 
ing wild beasts, exposing himself to pestilential vapors, 
subsisting on unhealthy food, jeopardizing his life many 
times over, rivalling those who are striving for an incor- 
ruptible crown — and all to enlarge the knowledge of the 
Kingdom of Nature. Look at the inventor, making a 
thousand unsuccessful experiments ; spending years on 
a single thought, submitting to be a laughing-stock, 
wasting his property, undermining his life, in order to 
make real what he sees to be possible. And how many 



300 Self- Sacrifice. 

such persons have died, without reaching their goal, in 
order to prepare the way for one who at last brings the 
wished-for process to perfection and makes an epoch in 
the history of human progress. 

So, when we turn to conduct relating to the moral 
and social improvement of man, the same rule holds 
good. The reigning system of corruption — of false- 
hood or tyranny, is supported by a thousand interests ; 
and he who would overthrow it must be maligned, con- 
temned, hunted down, killed, perhaps crucified. All 
moral reforms must struggle at first for a hearing and 
for existence. When did political liberty ever arise of 
itself without conflict, when did it become established 
without many fruitless efforts, many deaths of perhaps 
despairing patriots, many temporary triumphs of the 
opposite principle ? Liberty of conscience, too — that 
priceless right denied by a corrupt Christianity as lead- 
ing to divisions and to unbelief — how many brave and 
good men have fallen for it, before it was conceded as a 
right to their successors. As the traveller, crossing the 
plains of Lutzen, stops where, a few years ago, a rude 
pillar, and now a costly monument, records that " Gus- 
tavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, fell here, November 
16, 1632, in battle for liberty of faith," he feels that, but 
for this heroic man, Protestant Germany might have 
lost all its inheritance of principles from Luther, and 
the word of God have been again fettered. Christianity 
itself could not have made headway in the world unless 
the disciples of Christ had shown that they loved not 
their lives unto death. For not only was the prospect 
of death for Christ useful in drawing the soul away from 
a world full of allurements ; but the example, also, of the 
martyr's faith and love impressed on the world the con- 
viction that there was truth and power in the Gospel. 
But why should I speak of these successors of Christ, 



Self-Sacrifice. 301 

when His self-sacrificing death is the foundation of re- 
ligion and of the world's hope ? His sublime words, " If 
I be lifted up I will draw all men unto myself," show 
that He understood and perceived that influence from His 
death which would make an era in the history of man. 
Without this, His act of self-sacrifice, there might have 
been moral teaching, and noble, inspiring views of truth, 
but no Christianity, no Christian civilization, no reforma- 
tion of human nature, no kingdom of self-renouncing love. 

3. I remark, in the third place, that only by self-sac- 
rifice a man can become aware how much he can accom- 
plish. 

The natural inclination of many, when called to severe 
duty, is to weaken their sense of obligation by plead- 
ing some incapacity ; and it is quite possible to persuade 
ourselves into the fixed belief that an act or life of ser- 
vice on behalf of God or of mankind has no claims on 
us, because strength has not been given us equal to the 
bearing of the burden of duty. Thus men underrate 
themselves as to the good they can do, the power and 
influence they can wield, as much as they overrate them- 
selves in character. Of course, with such a cowardly 
depreciation of our strength, we can strike no heavy 
blows ; we can bear no fruits of goodness ; life wastes 
away at the best, in vain wishes for greater powers. 

Let now such a person, by Divine gift, receive the 
spirit of self-sacrifice. He has acquired, if not a radi- 
cally new feeling, one, at least, of greatly increased in- 
tensity, supported by deep convictions. He has also 
made the deliberate choice of a life which abides not 
alone, nor clings to the present world. He has now no 
motive to magnify the chances of failure, or to dwell 
on his peculiar unfitness. The motives, also, which led 
him to shrink back into inaction have become relatively 
weaker. Reputation — what cares he for the loss of this 



302 Self-Sacrifice. 

through ill-success, if to his inmost soul the cause com- 
mends itself as good ? Sloth — her spells are now broken, 
for there is a new charm, in the conception of going out 
of himself to bless the human race and to glorify God. 
Fear — what he fears now is to abide in lonely selfishness, 
and to be shut out of the company of benevolent minds. 
Thus he throws himself into action with a heart and 
courage which awakens within him a new sense of 
power. He dares now " do all becomes a man to do," 
he dares act out the godlike nature of which he is con- 
scious. He becomes the originator of useful projects, 
the fellow- worker with the downcast, filling them with 
new strength — the advocate of truth and justice de- 
spised. He is willing to stand alone, on the side of 
right, against a world. Can such a man, by his work 
and example, fail to accomplish a vast amount of good ? 
Even persons of weak minds, with no standing in so- 
ciety, and without education, by the spur of unselfish 
zeal achieve wonders, and reach a greatness of capacity 
to do good that seems to be derived from inspiration. 

4. But, I remark, in the fourth and last place, that the 
spirit of self-sacrifice is a source of good to him whom 
it animates. " He who hateth his life in this world shall 
keep it unto life eternal." He who serves Christ in 
this spirit will be honored by the Father. 

The fruits yielded by this spirit to him in whom it 
dwells are manifold. I will name but one or two. One 
is, that he is enabled by it to keep immortal life and its 
contrast with the present before his mind. When at 
the first he renounced this life as the principal, if not the 
main source of his highest good, he was brought into 
familiarity with the greatest thoughts in the universe. 
These, and the purposes formed in view of them, are, 
under grace, the sources of his strength, whenever this 
present world is beginning to grow larger and brighter 



Self- Sacrifice. 303 

before his eye. Can it be questioned that under such 
ennobling influences we must grow more manly, more 
holy, and more blessed ? 

Another fruit of this spirit lies in its being a spirit of 
joy and triumph. The generous emotions, as we have 
seen, contain the power of lifting the mind above pain 
and reproach. The attention is taken up by the higher 
object of pursuit, by the ardor of desire, the conscious- 
ness of acting well, and the approval of God. The joy of 
martyrs amid the flames has been explained by many as 
the result of supernatural assistance from on high. I 
will not deny this, yet such joy is only the extreme of 
that joy which attends all self sacrificing actions. While 
selfishness, dreading pain and loving life, feels through 
every nerve, this spirit which is ready to give up the life 
of this world, the unselfish, has a satisfaction, and even 
an exaltation in the very act which is so costly. It is, if 
I may be allowed the illustration, a spiritual ether which 
renders the soul insensible to suffering, and makes pain 
rather like the conception of our dreams than a reality. 
It brings with it the joy of approving reflection, where 
the soul, after a struggle, having overthrown inferior 
motives, reposes in the thought of acting on fixed prin- 
ciples and of having conquered evil. There is in it the 
joy of conceiving great and good plans, and pressing 
them through with self-forgetting earnestness and an- 
ticipations of success. There is the joy of accomplish- 
ment, when good, that was sown in tears, has been 
reaped — a joy like the harvester's, as he leans over his 
sickle and looks at the prostrate rows of grain, or as the 
mother's when, after all her pangs, she gazes on her 
child. There is joy even in defeat and disgrace, for con- 
science' sake, for right, and because God is still the 
same. Defeat itself is hopeful, since by it testimony is 
rendered against evil before the world. There is joy in 



304 Self-Sacrifice. 

having God's approval, in having done a good work for 
Him which He, the unchangeable one, must ever regard 
as good, and must reward with His perpetual smile. 

Another blessed fruit of this spirit consists in its unit- 
ing the subject of it icith all the good. He who abideth 
not alone, but bears fruit, has an object beyond himself 
for which he labors ; he feels the power of sympathy and 
is brought into contact and fellowship with all who are 
like him. The good he derives from this fellowship is 
almost boundless. He has the pleasure of confidence, 
for he knows he can trust and be trusted. He has the 
pleasure of feeling strong in his alliance with the com- 
bined hosts on God's side. He has the pleasure of hope 
that such a body under such a king must carry the day. 
He has the pleasure of sweet intercourse by the way and 
amid his work. He has the pleasure in his lonely hours 
and dark hours, of feeling that he is not alone, that a 
great company is with him at heart, though they may 
not know him. Thus he travels through this world, 
in company with kindred minds, until he reaches the 
perfected part of the company of the good in Heaven. 

And it is to the heavenly rewards, as the last fruit of 
self-sacrifice, that I call your attention. He who loveth 
his life in this world must love it because he is disquali- 
fied for the enjoyments of the spiritual world. There is 
no spiritual bliss that can afford him pleasure. But 
the man of Christian self-sacrifice has the very spirit of 
Heaven, and is prepared by his course below for partici- 
pating in the bliss above. And what an enhancement of 
this bliss it is that it is a rest after the toils of self-sacri- 
fice. The martyr's flames were fierce while they lasted, 
but the moment of pain has now become a little speck 
in the distance ; the pain that is past is annihilated, and 
by its contrast gives greater zest to the present. So of 
every act of self-sacrifice. The wonder will be, in that 



Self- Sacrifice. 305 

bright world, that so little had to be endured in the 
longest life of trial, before the door was opened into the 
life of real blessedness. Bat whether more or less was 
endured, it is not the opportunity, but the spirit, which is 
rewarded, and which is its own reward. Although all 
self-sacrifice shall then be over, and to work shall be to 
rest, yet the essence of the spirit — love that forgets itself 
and its own separate interests — shall be immortal. 



SERMON XXI. 

THE BENEFITS TO CHARACTER OF IGNORANCE OF THE 
FUTURE. 

Acts i. 7. And he said unto them it is not for you to know the times 
or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. 

One department of knowledge, as our Lord here teaches 
vis, is kept by God within His own power, or, in other 
words, is reserved to Himself, and not laid open before the 
eyes of mortals. The laws of the kingdom of nature He 
has in part spread before us for our study, and in that field 
is leading mankind continually further into the deeper, 
more hidden recesses of His counsels. These laws, when 
we have once gathered them up from the examination of 
the past, become our almost certain guides for the future. 
It is true, indeed, that even in this department, all things 
are not naked and open to our eyes. The phenomena of 
the atmosphere cannot be predicted with unerring accu- 
racy, and the earth still contains many secrets which 
may never be reached. It is, however, yet true, that in 
the material world, where God acts by laws which partake 
of His own immutability, He allows us to predict what He 
will do hereafter, and gives us firm ground to stand upon 
in our plans which reach into the distant future. " Thou 
hast established the earth and it abideth." " Forever, O 
Lord, Thy word is settled in Heaven." 

There is, however, another department, where knowledge 
cannot be reduced to simple laws, where everything is 
complicated, and the future is hidden from the foresight 
of man. This is the department in which the agencies of 
God and man meet, where the plan of the great Ruler and 
30G 



Ignorance of the Future. 307 

the plans of countless finite beings run across one another, 
where the creatures of God are influencing and changing 
and thwarting one another in manifold ways, and God 
Himself is using them with or against their wills, by spir- 
itual, invisible means, to accomplish His plan for the hu- 
man race. So many agents, so many interactions create 
a confusion and complication which none but infinite skill 
can disentangle, the results of which only God can foresee. 
Thus the divine government over men, where one would 
think beforehand, from our knowledge of man himself, 
that all ought to be clear, is really hid in impenetrable 
clouds. The coming history of the world, the future life 
of every individual man lies beyond conjecture. Even the 
events which are to affect His own kingdom of grace God 
has kept in His own power. He has disclosed a little, He 
has made the final winding up sure, but this is a region of 
knowledge where He reigns alone, and shares the partic- 
ulars of the boundless plan with no other. 

It may be profitable to give one or two illustrations of 
so plain a subject. And first we find, every one of us, in 
our own experience, that the times and seasons of human 
life God has put in His own power. All of us who have 
passed the boundaries of youth can testify that an unex- 
pected future has been unrolling itself before us through 
all our years. "We make new acquaintances and they 
affect our condition and prospects. Small circumstances 
may have proved to be turning points in our lives, when 
we had no suspicion of their importance. Our plans are 
ever interrupted by novel events wholly unforeseen. Dis- 
ease, misfortune, the death of friends, our own mortality, 
as well as the prosperities and joys of our earthly condi- 
tion, are as much hid from us as if the lot determined 
them. No sagacity escapes from this ignorance, which is 
indeed proverbial. 

Another illustration is drawn from the strange mistakes 
of the most practiced men, as they stand on the threshold 



308 The benefits to Character of 

of great events. There are vast revolutions in society and 
government, which alter the whole course of the world, 
and must have had deep foundations laid for them in the 
past ; yet the statesmen and philosophers of the time are 
slumbering without anxiety on the sides of the volcano. 
Nay, if some one, confident in the sway of general law, 
assured that the divine government will have its way and 
will claim its rights, ventures to predict in vague terms a 
coming disaster, the men of his time will laugh at him as 
a wild guesser. But the storm which he foreboded has 
come, and has left desolations by wind, and flood, and 
lightning, which the predicter himself did not anticipate. 
Thus at the fall of the Roman republic, how little did 
the Senatorial party augur, when they required Caesar to 
resign his command on a certain day, that they were urging 
on measures which would destroy the power of the aris- 
tocracy forever, would change Rome into an empire, would 
bring on an immense revolution in society, law and gov- 
ernment ! How little did Caiaphas or Pilate dream, at 
the crucifixion of Christ, of the power that would go forth 
through all the ages from that submissive man who lay 
under their hand ! How little did Leo X. and the lead- 
ing Italians imagine that Martin Luther would make an 
era, and start a movement that would never stop ! Who 
thought a little before the French revolution, unless some 
dreamer regarded as wild, that all the thrones of Europe 
would be shaken, or that a man of Corsica would hold 
half the continent under his foot ? "We call ourselves wise 
in matters of revolution on this side of the Atlantic, but 
if any saw the cloud of our* present troubles arising, they 
measured not its vastness or its duration, and some there 
were among the leaders of the nation who ventured on 
predictions that the storm would blow over in a little 
space, only to earn for themselves the rebuke of levity and 
folly. " O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in 
himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." 

* Refers to the war begining in 1861. 



Ignorance of the Future. 309 

Nor can I forbear giving one illustration more, which 
seems to have a close relation to the text of my discourse. 
The prophets and apostles, whose minds were divinely en- 
lightened concerning the future, were yet kept to a great 
degree in ignorance of that future, so that the times and 
seasons — that is to say, the length of the interval between 
events, and the fit opportunities of divine action, or the 
crises of the kingdom of God — were not brought within 
their range of sight. Some persons seem to imagine that 
when God set apart a prophet to reveal His counsels to His 
people, the man acquired a telescopic sight which pene- 
trated into all the details of the remote and the future, as 
though he had become a partaker of the divine mind. 
But this is far from being true of those comprehensive 
visions, in which the prophet foresaw the stages of the king- 
dom of God on earth. We prophesy in part, says Paul, 
that is imperfectly. And if the word to prophesy here de- 
notes utterances concerning the divine will in the present, 
and these are declared to be partial or incomplete, much 
more partial must be the utterances concerning the divine 
intentions in the future. " The prophets of the old time," 
says Peter, " searched what or what manner of time the 
Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it tes- 
tified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory 
that should follow." All was vague but beautiful before 
their eyes, enough to keep hope alive, for which object 
they were made to prophesy, but not enough to satisfy 
curiosity. And so the Apostles knew not when their 
Master would appear again on the earth : without doubt 
their feelings and hopes antedated an event " the times 
and seasons of which God had put in his own power," 
which He has kept hidden until now from His church, 
and which will come, when it comes, like a thief. 

Such being the blindness of men in regard to the future 
history of mankind, and such being the plan of God in 
this department of His kingdom, we may profitably ask 



310 The benefits to Character of 

what are the moral uses, the purposes of discipline for the 
character of the individual and for the welfare of the 
Church, which this arrangement of His was intended to 
serve? Doubtless an instinct, like that of the bird, pre- 
saging the storm or providing against winter, could have 
been given to us ; some foreboding or presentiment, such as 
certain persons seem to have now and then, could have run 
through our lives without tearing in twain the veil that 
hides the future from our eyes. But man is left to his 
traditions, and experiences, and hopes, and moral convic- 
tions, with no divine finger to warn or guide him, while 
the lower animal has in one sense a closer union with 
its Creator, and feels the cord which ties him to the 
Supreme Keason. And the cause of the difference is, 
that to the brute events are every thing, but character 
nothing, while to the man character is every thing and 
events nothing, save as they act on character. 

Among the reasons why the events which make up 
human life and history are concealed from the pre- 
science of man, we mention, 

I. First, that in the province of individual effort un- 
certainty as to the future, united with probability of suc- 
cess, taxes the energies of man and develops his character 
in a desirable way. 

Our life is directed to a great extent by calculations 
of the probable, and the possible, derived from the 
past, and applied to the future. Hope and fear are 
ever on the watch, looking forward for something to be 
secured or avoided. We know that what we hope for 
may fail to be realized if we relax our efforts. It is 
obvious that this system of things runs through life and 
gives to it that energy, industry and precaution, without 
which life would end in calamity. The man who is 
certain of future good feels no impulse to secure it by 
exertions of his own, for failure is regarded as impossi- 
ble. The man who is uncertain has every motive to 



Ignorance of the Future. 311 

prevent ill success, and will avail himself of his powers, 
of the helps afforded by the laws of nature and by 
human experience ; he will understand his own strength 
by putting it to the trial ; he will guard against those 
faults which can obstruct his way, and will, all the 
while, be gathering new power as he goes forward. Not 
only can he accomplish as much as he hoped for, but 
in many cases a great deal more. He thus grows and 
advances, while he who is certain of the future, who lets 
causes beyond himself have their way and floats down 
the stream, is not disciplined by the work of life and 
learns from life little or nothing. 

In particular the difficulties which we are to meet with 
in every good object, especially in endeavoring to improve 
our characters, do not take us by surprise, as long as we 
are ignorant of the future. We admit the possibility of 
them, we allow for their coming, and for their coming 
when we can least foresee their approach, we work and 
rest as in the neighborhood of enemies. Thus we are not 
stunned by any force which they may bring against us 
but hold out courageously, and are prepared for new exer- 
tions even when baffled and overthrown. 

So too, while our uncertainty as to the future enables 
us to take possible difficulties into view, it enables us also 
to admit the possibilities of ultimate failure. Success is 
uncertain. Countless failures in smaller things are teach- 
ing us that the grand result may never be reached, that 
something may interpose to render it impossible. Thus 
we adjust our minds to the order of things appointed for 
finite beings, and have the foundation laid in our character 
for submission to a higher will. 

Thus are we hardened, made wary and careful ; thus 
the virtues of prudence, forethought, diligence, vigilance, 
courage, and a train of others which move in harmony 
with these, are cherished in our souls. 

We have considered the effect of uncertainty as to the 



312 The benefits to Character of 

future thus far upon the character, whatever may be the 
moral condition of the individual before God. Doubtless 
a race of fallen beings is by this discipline made much 
nobler and fitter for good, and contains within itself more 
possibilities of recovery and progress than if it were en- 
dowed with prophetic foresight, and like God saw the 
end with clear vision. But how does this law of our con- 
dition act in respect to our spiritual and eternal interests? 
How does it act in relation to the interests of God's king- 
dom on earth? 

As for the first point, our eternal interests, it is plain 
that entire inability to estimate the course of our future 
life would cut off motive, and entire certainty might 
plunge us into despair if the foreseen end were evil, and 
into carelessness, if it were good. But now we have the 
highest motives to exertion, — a probability of success, if our 
efforts are commensurate to the greatness of the issue, and 
a certainty of failure, if we let earthly things take the 
control of our lives. Nothing final is assured to us before 
the end of our course by the gracious decree of God or 
by our own exertions. " So run that you may obtain " 
is the rule for our natures, and while by acting in 
conformity with this rule we secure all good and escajoe 
all evil, we gain upon our way everlasting benefits for our 
characters. The struggles through which we pass are the 
means of purifying us from sin, and the result is worth 
them all. 

As for the other point, the interests of the kingdom of 
God, — as long as the law of the kingdom is that nothing is 
brought to pass but by the co-operation of God and man, 
and that nothing but promises of ultimate success, no im- 
mediate, sudden triumph of the principles of Christ, is 
held out before the servants of God ; it is plain that they 
are in circumstances most favorable to strenuous exertion. 
Nothing goes on without them ; there are only moral 
forces working without magic against the mass of evil in 



Ignorance of the Future. 313 

the kingdom of heaven and these forces they must wield. 
They know not the result of each effort, they know not 
when or how the kingdom will come in all its perfection. 
But they have every motive for acting, each in his sphere, 
and as a body, for carrying the work along through succes- 
sive generations. The failure of others to do their part 
cannot wholly prevent my efforts from bearing rich fruit, 
and my failure to do mine can be a hinderance and a de- 
lay to the general success. Those same motives act then 
here, those same virtues of character are strengthened in 
the church, which are encouraged in any co-operation for 
a future earthly object. 

II. It is well that we cannot foresee the mass of diffi- 
culties which may beset and discourage us in our future 
lives, and that all our trials do not press on us at once. 
The trials of character which men meet with through 
ignorance of the future sometimes break down the most 
stout-hearted, and lead the most determined to give up an 
enterprise. Nay, it often happens that an apprehended 
difficulty will unnerve and terrify the soul so that it loses 
all power of action. Suppose now, that this stage of 
ignorance were exchanged for a state of certainty; that 
we saw in long array, the trials, hazards, losses, pains, 
contempt, that were to attend on our plans ; that we 
could take a measure of the bodily toil, the mental anx- 
iety or tension, the spiritual struggles, the perplexities 
and contests of our entire lives, is it not evident that the 
mass of them would seem too great for human strength 
to move, and, even if final success were within our reach, 
should we not feel unequal to the number and severity of 
the exertions required to secure it ? Ignorance, then, of 
the sum total of our difficulties is a great blessing for us, 
and without it, we should not have courage to undertake 
anything good and great. We now encounter our toils 
and anxieties one by one; we conquer them in detail, and 
sweet hope lives through all the efforts. But then a great 



314 The benefits to Character of 

cloud would hang around every new enterprise ; a great 
mountain or wide sea would be ever in our way; the 
present and the future would conspire to . terrify and dis- 
hearten us. I ask you, if any man is equal to the endu- 
rance, beforehand and at once, of all the pains that are 
allotted to him through all time, — to the full prospect and 
adequate conception of all that is to try him until he 
reaches his goal ? Only one man through all the ages has 
had such knowledge, — He who "died every day He 
lived," the death on the cross for our sins. And He, 
without a perfect faith and consecration, would have sunk 
under the burden. 

A few illustrations will set this truth in a clear point of 
view. 

An inventor is a man who gropes in the dark, confident 
that the laws of nature in her different departments may 
be made to conspire for a certain result, and yet not know- 
ing how. He works on through profitless experiments, 
now elated with hope, now depressed by disappointment ; 
the world calls him a visionary who is wasting his property 
and his life on a project ; a thousand times he wishes that 
he had had a different lot and a different nature. By- 
and-by, after many despairs and an amount of toil and 
thought beyond calculation, he has gained what he sought 
and he is happy. But let the end be as bright as it may, 
if he could have taken one clear, full look of his long, 
dreary conflict with difficulties, at the time when he laid 
his plan of life, who believes that he could have held 
on his way in courage and hope? Would he not have fled 
from such a career ? and thus is not the world indebted 
for much of its progress, for many improvements in science 
and art, to man's ignorance of the future ? 

Another illustration, which we all must feel, is suggested 
by the present war. If we had foreseen its length, its 
costliness in money and life, its ill successes interspersed 
among its victories ; if the soldiers, as they thought of en- 
listing, could have foreseen their hardships, wounds, de- 



Ignorance of the Future. 315 

feats, is it not more than probable that the strength to 
persevere would have been taken out of us, that a major- 
ity of the people would have shrunk from the contest, 
although certain of ultimate success? Of how many pub- 
lic and private efforts the same thing can be said. We 
can resolve nobly, we can grapple with each trial as it 
comes, but the whole load of the future, which God in His 
mercy distributes over months and years, it is beyond our 
powers to carry. 

So also, when a man has devoted himself to the work 
of preaching Christ's gospel, it is best for him to live in 
ignorance of the future. The Apostles saw trials, bloody 
ones, before them, and in prophetic foresight foresaw a 
failing away from the faith. But it was a mercy to them 
that they did not see the slow rate at which Christian 
truth has moved over the world, the days of Mohammed, 
the days of papal darkness, the days of a divided, dis- 
tracted church. Had all this arisen above their horizon, 
the sadness and discouragement of the sight would have 
benumbed even them. Like them a minister goes hope- 
fully into his field. For long years his labors are crowned 
with small fruit. The church declines. Men do not for- 
sake their sins. Those from whom he had hoped most 
disappoint him utterly. Like Elijah he is tempted to ro 
quest God to take away his life. Yet if no one else is 
saved, he at least is purified by seeming ill-success, and a 
seed may have been sown which will be reaped when he is 
at rest. But if he had foreseen all, if he could have cast 
liis eye forward on the gloomy future, more than mortal 
strength would have been needed by him to succeed in his 
work for Christ. 

There is another illustration which must commend 
itself to all who have been endeavoring to live for God 
through many years of this earthly life. Who of them 
is not painfully conscious of fruitless struggles against 
sins, of a slow and fitful progress, of frequent declensions, 



316 The benefits to Character of 

of great perplexities on the momentous points of truth 
and duty, of despondency and uncertainty in regard to 
the inward life ? Now if all this had been foreseen at t'he 
beginning, when as yet Christian virtue, unhardened and 
feeble, was but a tender plant amid the weeds of sin ; Who 
could have collected courage enough to endure so much 
for the attainment of so little ? We may safely say that 
the life of the soul would be quenched at first, if the soul 
could l;-ok forward with a full realization of all the trials 
of its earthly pilgrimage. 

And you, my young friends, whose hearts beat strong 
with hope, you especially have reason to bless God that 
He has kept the times and seasons of your lives in His own 
power. You may feel a natural curiosity sometimes to 
know what will befall you in the world : Where shall I be 
when I finish my college and professional life ; who will 
be my intimates ; what my condition ; how long the dura- 
tion of my lot ? Such questions you may ask, but God 
be praised that there is no oracle to answer. For if you 
could look, as through some opened door, upon a series of 
pictures representing exactly all your burdens, all your 
disappointments, all your heart-griefs, all the obstacles in 
your way; your energy and courage would flag, your hopes 
would spring up no longer, life would lose the health 
of its tone and its power of growing better. Such would 
be the effects of a knowledge and a foresight which hap- 
pily are not imparted to mortals. 

I would not be much concerned, 

Nor vainly long to see 
The volumes of Thy deep decrees, 

What months are writ for me. 

III. Finally man's ignorance of the future aids the 
spirit of piety. And of this large subject I have time to 
dwell on one or two points only, as that the present limi- 
tations of our knowledge concerning the future help us to 



Ignorance of the Future. 317 

realize that God has a plan for us and for the world ; that 
they suggest to us our dependence and awaken our faith. 

Let no one impute to me here the opinion that igno- 
rance is in such sort a handmaid of piety, that, if we could 
foresee the operation of all causes, we should eliminate 
God's providence and activity from the world, but that, 
as we cannot do this, we label with the name of pro- 
vidence what we cannot explain. Perhaps, if we had 
insight enough to refer all phenomena, those of the ma- 
terial world and those of human life, to their complicated 
causes, we should detect the secret invisible string which 
the Great Ruler holds in His hands for swaying free 
minds and controlling history: perhaps, however, even 
then we might doubt, and be able not to see God, if He 
stood before us. But proof of this sort, I do not value 
much, and this is not the way, in which God impresses 
His existence on our souls. A healthy mind assumes 
Him ; He is the petitio prindpii. His manifestations in 
His works may awaken a sense of God, but do not pro- 
duce it. The preparation for our faith is laid in our very 
nature and its natural development. Doubt of Him is 
the daughter of sin. 

Such being the readiness of our nature to receive the 
presence of God in the world as an ultimate fact, the 
simple inquiry now is, in what constitution of things are 
we most freed from the sway of the visible world, and 
most thrown back upon an invisible God, — when we can 
see our way clear and distinct before us, or when uncer- 
tainty hangs around our future ? The answer given by 
all experience is, that when we feel surest of the success of 
our plans, when we are strongest and most stable in our 
own opinion, when we least fear disaster, then God is far- 
thest off from us; and that, when a deeper impression 
comes home to us of the uncertainties of our condition, 
when we can make the least calculation of the future, then 
the reality and sway of God are forced upon our thoughts. 



318 The benefits to Character of 

The finite, dependent being is preserved in a sense of his 
dependence, not by a process of reasoning, but by realizing 
that he is not his own master, that he cannot foresee or 
secure his own way, that confidence in himself as the guar- 
dian of his own interests is presumptuous. The uncertain- 
ties of our lives, our ignorance, our weakness suggest the 
feeling of our dependence, and the sense of our dependence 
is a prime essential of piety. 

But our ignorance of the future is an aid to faith also- 
We trust, where we do not know. We rely on character 
because it is a security and because we cannot foresee 
events. The character of God is a guaranty for that 
which shall come to pass. But why, one may ask, should 
a finite mind, ignorant of the future, trust rather than dis- 
trust, believe rather than doubt ? Without question, our 
ignorance opens the door both to faith and to the want of 
it, and just here lies the trial of our characters. But when 
our dependence on a Supreme power is felt, when the fact 
is admitted that God has plans running through every 
life and all history, then faith, and not distrust, is natural, 
for such plans are good, they cannot fail ; he who is in 
harmony with them shall prosper, and God will protect 
his interests. Thus much natural religion could discover. 
Doubtless, a spotless soul, without a revelation, would grow 
up into confidence in God, would feel safe under His care, 
in danger would look to Him as a present helper, would 
commit its future into His hands. But how much more is 
faith excited by the united influence of a revelation which 
gives us a right to trust in God, and of our state of igno- 
rance concerning the future which impels us to faith be- 
cause we have neither strength nor sight. 

I cannot lay this subject down, without suggesting, as I 
close, two thoughts that follow the train of our remarks. 
The first of these is, that according to analogy, prophecy 
will never shed more than a dim, uncertain light upon the 
future before its fulfillment. The prophecies relating to 



Ignorance of the Future. 310 

Christ were such, that worldly minds could misinterpret 
them, and this the Jewish spirit was sure to do. Christ 
gave no satifaction, as we have seen, to His disciples, when 
they questioned Him concerning the future destinies of the 
kingdom of God. So, too, when Peter, in idle curiosity, 
asked his Master what should befall John, he received but 
an ambiguous answer, — " If I will that he tarry till I 
come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me." And so 
Paul went to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that 
should befall him there, save that the Holy Ghost kept as- 
suring him, as he traveled on his way, that bonds and 
afflictions were in store for him. And the history of in- 
terpretation shows, that thus far the Church has made 
little progress in applying prophecies to particular events. 

Now according to our Saviour's words in our text this 
ought to be so. It is not for us " to know the times or 
the seasons which the Father hath put into his own 
power." And if we have discovered the purpose of God 
in keeping us ignorant of the future this ought to be so. 
Prophecy gives us light, that the Church may not lose its 
hope in the dark hours of its discipline. But the light 
reveals neither the length of the way, nor the severity of 
the trials, nor the exact nature or extent of the final tri- 
umph, for such full knowledge would prevent those influ- 
ences with which the present state of things acts on 
character, and which are better than knowledge. 

Filially, he who gains character out of the uncertainties 
of life is a great gainer. He who struggles on to what is 
called success may gain nothing. If this world were our 
all, he who after long effort has secured his prize, has only 
gained that which is less sure than life itself, and has 
besides passed through the healthy discipline which comes 
from a life of work and uncertainty. But if this world is 
not our all, what has he gained ? What uncertainty of 
the future life has lie provided for? May he not by limit- 
ing his plans to this world have lost every thing? May 



320 Ignorance of the Future. 

not preparation for trie life to come be the very point 
towards which finite ignorance was meant to conduct him ? 
Must he not perish if he opens his eye to all the uncertain- 
ties and risks of this life, while he has no forethought for 
the great limitless future ? 

But on the other hand he who gains character out of 
the uncertainties of life gains everything. He has learned 
in the dark not only those qualities of character which 
make him a good actor in these earthly scenes and which 
generally insure success ; but he has learned also how to 
depend on God, to trust in His providence, to act with 
Him in His plans, and to secure His co-operation. He is 
thus fitted for eternal life, for its employment, for its reve- 
lations. He has gained from his condition here what God 
meant he should. Soon this earthly darkness shall pass 
away ; soon a boundless field of knowledge be open to 
him ; soon perfect certainty be within his reach. He now 
knows as he is known. Is not this gain ? * 
*1864 



SERMON XXII. 

THE STABILITY OF GOD'S THRONE. 
Psalm xciii. 

The subject of this magnificent Psalm is the stability of 
God in His natural and moral kingdom. He is repre- 
sented as a king upon his throne, robed in majesty and 
girded with strength : to Him the world is indebted for its 
stability, since He is from everlasting and His throne was 
established of old. Against Him, thus sitting on His 
throne, the wild, turbulent floods rise in their fury, as if 
they would drive Him from His established power, but 
the Lord, seated on high, is mightier than all the dis- 
turbing forces — whether of nature or of nations, which lift 
themselves against His authority. And of this stability 
His law and moral government partake : His testimonies 
or precepts are very sure ; they may be relied upon, for 
they have the permanency of God in them. Holiness be- 
cometh His house forever ; there are fixed proprieties in the 
worship of Him and in the relations of the worshiper, 
which will not pass away. 

The irregular forces of the natural world are elsewhere 
represented under the image of a wild and swelling sea. 
But some interpreters suppose, that the type includes the 
moral commotion, also, of agitated, disquieted nations. 
In the 65th Psalm the two kinds of disorder are spoken of 
together as subject to the sway of God — "which stilleth the 
noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the fury of 
the people." I shall give this latitude to the meaning 
here, so that the doctrine of the Psalm is the stability of 

32 1 " 



322 The Stability of God's Throne. 

God on His throne amid the natural and moral forces of 
the world which seem to threaten the order of His govern- 
ment. 

In illustration of the truths set forth in this Psalm, I 
remark, 

I. That the stability of God presented to us in the 
Scriptures consists in His fixed character and purposes, 
backed by unlimited power. It is not law, — regular and 
uniform sequence, dependent on the necessity of things — 
to which the Bible refers the order of nature. There is a 
will above law, and a character of infinite wisdom and good- 
ness behind will, which is the support of the universe. If 
ever the Scriptures seem to represent God as arbitrary, as 
willing and decreeing without a reason, the representation, 
which is made in order to set forth, in a strong way, the 
unalterableness and irresistibleness of the decree of God, 
is corrected by other passages where the decrees of God 
appear as His counsels, the results of His perfect wisdom 
and moral excellence. 

But this wisdom and moral excellence could not sit 
upon a throne, God could not be a king without power 
equal to His wisdom. Separate the two, conceive of wis- 
dom without power, or power without wisdom, and there 
could be no stability in the system of things. Power 
alone would be ever fashioning and destroying ; wisdom 
would be ever contriving without accomplishing, or else 
would confine itself to the field of its own limited re- 
sources, because it would be unwise to push further. 
God's majesty and strength as a ruler, is in fact, the 
union of His perfect attributes. 

How unlike is this scriptural representation of God to 
the conceptions of many heathen religions and heathen 
philosophers. The god of heathenism is bound by and 
under the control of the order of nature. A higher 
something, fate or law, sits above him, limiting his move- 
ments and making him its vicegerent and subordinate 



The Stability of God's Throne. 323 

His will is a capricious, unreasonable decree, formed at 
the time, or after a short foresight and deliberation ; he 
has no plans reaching from the beginning and embracing 
all things. The order of the world is not his work. 

The heathen philosopher, on the other hand, tried to 
strip the Deity of all limitation and change, of every in- 
fluence from finite things and eveiy relation to them; and 
so he reached the notion of bare entity. The stability 
of God in his view was such, the idea of Him was so 
broad and abstract, that all personal attributes and works 
must be denied to Him altogether. Thus, for all practical 
purposes, the world was left to itself, and the Deity was 
stripped of all that could awaken the feeling of awe and 
respect in the human soul. 

II. The stability of the world results from the stability 
of God. It is the place where He unfolds His fixed but 
progressive system. 

The world makes two opposite impressions on the ob- 
server. First, it is a scene of endless change and alterna- 
tion. Life and death, growth and decay, the wearing away 
of the solid structure, and the reconstruction, the sinkings 
and upheavings of its surface — phenomena like these 
show a want of stability, a war of opposites. But again, 
as the observer looks beyond these immediate appear- 
ances, he sees steady, unwavering law, which may have 
had its way through countless ages, and shows no sign of 
growing weary or coming to an end. " One generation 
passeth away," he will say, "and another generation 
cometh, but the earth abideth forever." 

The convictions also, of mankind give their testi- 
mony to the stability of the system. We believe, we 
know not why, in the permanence of the order of nature. 
This primary faith is no mere result of experience, but is 
a necessary law of thought for the unthinking and igno- 
rant as well as for the philosopher. It does not assume 
that there was no beginning of material things, or that 



324 The Stability of God's Throne. 

there can be no end, but only that there is so much assur- 
ance of the continuance of the system, that all fear of 
present change may be dismissed, and all plans of inaD, 
even if they embrace ages, may be rationally prosecuted. 
The God who gives stability to the universe has revealed 
this stability to mankind, that they may work their work 
demanding foresight and long preparation without dis- 
quiet and anxiety. 

But the system of the world unites progress with sta- 
bility. The ancient thinkers could not reach the know- 
ledge of this great fact, which geology has disclosed to our 
eyes. The world itself, so fastened on its rocky base, has 
been moulded over and over again ; has risen and sunk ; 
has received new forms of life rising in dignity up to man, 
the newly settled tenant, — in short, has had a marvellous 
and steadily advancing history, since it has been a fit 
abode for animated beings. 

These glimpses, which science gives us of the progress 
of the system, accord with the declarations of Scripture, 
concerning the unfolding of God's counsels in regard to 
creation, redemption, and the world's future destiny. But 
these great movements are no evidences of change — they 
rather manifest a steady, onward march — an established 
plan which may need milleniums for its full accomplish- 
ment. "The world is established that it cannot be 
moved." This stability is an emanation of the wisdom 
and power of God, — of wisdom which has contrived it as 
the theatre, where He is carrying forward His great plan, 
and which must be kept in its place as long as the plan 
demands, and of power which deals with unyielding 
matter, as easily as the potter with the clay. 

III. The Psalmist proceeds to speak of forces natural, 
and perhaps moral or human, whose violence seems for 
the time to obstruct the plan of God and to endanger the 
stability of the system. 

Casting our eyes first upon the seemingly irregular 



The Stability of God's Throne. 325 

forces of nature, with what awe we behold the great deep 
agitated by tempests ; overwhelming after a brief resist- 
ance the well-compacted vessel with all its treasure of 
human lives ; breaking down great cliffs along the coasts 
which it has undermined with caverns ; sweeping over 
great tracts of level ground planted by the husbandmen ; 
tearing away dykes and dams so as to let in a flood upon 
lands that have been reclaimed fro 11 its dominions. How 
fearful, also, and wild are rivers in floods, when even 
the scarcely noticed brook seems clothed with a new power 
of death; how in a moment devastation is spread over 
meadow and plain, and streams find out another channel 
than that which for ages they have followed. Still more 
irregular is the air in tempests, sweeping over thousands 
of miles and destroying the works of man in its way ; yet 
more fearful the lightning with the thunder ; — the most in- 
evitable, when it strikes, of all foes. But of all earthly 
forces the earthquake seems most like an insurrection 
against God, as if the earth itself were no longer under 
His curb — the earthquake tumbling cities down, cleaving 
the ground with great chasms, giving the watchword to 
volcanic fires to pour themselves forth anew, and sending 
the sea far up in destroying waves upon the populous 
shore. These are wild, convulsionary forces, but others 
wear away or alter the earth in silence. In a course of 
ages what vast effects are produced by moisture, by heat 
and cold, by the soil descending with the currents of 
rivers, by melting snow and the decay of vegetable matter. 
But notwithstanding all these powers, violent or quiet, the 
world is established that it cannot be moved. The agi- 
tated sea and air, the flood and the lightning, do their 
work, and that on the whole a beneficent work according 
to God's laws, without endangering the safety of the sys- 
tem. Since man has been placed on the earth its face and 
feme-work have remained nearly the same. Nay, earth 
outlasts all attacks upon it, whether occasional and vio- 



326 The Stability of God's Throne. 

lent, or silent and continual, and will endure until it shall 
be remodeled again to become a dwelling-place of the 
saints. 

It is worth remarking also that there is a stability and 
power of resistance in some of God's very minute works, as 
if He had determined that life in all its species should go on 
safely through all the disturbances of the elements. The 
eggs of the smallest animals show a vitality in extremes 
of heat and cold that is truly surprising. Of the little 
shell, the fragile tenement of a living being, a poet of our 
day says that it is 

Frail, but of force to withstand 

Year after year the shock 
Of cataract seas that snap 

The three deckers' oaken spine, 
Athwart the ledges of rock. 

But, again, in the moral system among men, forces yet 
more terrific lift themselves up against established order. 
The commotions of nations are more fearful than floods 
or swelling seas or tempests in the air, or even than the 
earthquake. It is no exaggeration when the Hebrew pro- 
phets speak of them in figures borrowed from the agita- 
tions in nature. " Ho to the multitude of many people, 
says Isaiah, which make a noise like the noise of the seas, 
and to the rushing of nations that make a rushing like 
the rushing of mighty waters." "The earth is utterly 
broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is 
moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like 
a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage ; and the 
transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it, and it shall 
fall and not rise again." "The multitude of the strangers 
shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible 
ones shall be as chaff that passeth away ; yea it shall be 
at an instant, suddenly. Thou shalt be visited of the 
Lord with thunder and with earthquake, and great noise, 
with storm and tempest and the flame of devouring fire." 



The Stability of God's Throne. 327 

The insurrectionary forces here are those of blind 
desire, furious will, ignorance and hatred. Sometimes, 
when some of these reach a certain pitch of violence in a 
single man, they are frightful. But how sublimely awful 
they become when a whole people, millions of men, are 
filled with fury together, and are banded in the pride of 
power and in desperate resolution to do something unjust 
and unholy before God and men, — when they court ruin 
rather than consent to retrace their steps. 

There is a difference between these violences in the moral 
system and those in the kingdom of nature. The wild 
forces in the latter case obey an established law and do a 
beneficent work — all at least, except the earthquake, into 
the purpose of which men have not yet been able to pene- 
trate. But violence in the moral world, the fury and wild 
force of nations, as of individuals, is not only against 
moral order but also against the original conception of 
the system. The fact of sin, then, the impetuous rage of 
sin on the great scale, looks as if finite beings were getting 
the better of God, as if they were disappointing Him, 
and marring somewhat the majesty of His throne, when 
they lift up their waves against Him. But it is far other- 
wise: the Lord on high is in the end shown to be 
" mightier than the noise of many waters, yea than the 
mighty waves of the sea." 

For first the law of retribution is continually coming 
into play, when nations commit great crimes. The blind 
force of finite minds punishes itself, and thus clothes God 
before the eyes of His creatures with majesty, and estab- 
lishes His throne. It is a glorious thing when national 
wickedness is punished ; God seems to come nearer then 
than in the earthquake and the flood ; He speaks a word 
of rebuke and warning to many millions all at once. As 
He sees them madly given up to falsehoods, He leads 
them by false hopes or rash counsels or the dissensions of 
selfish ambition to disaster and disgrace, or He blows 



328 The Stability of God's Throne. 

upon them with His pestilential breath, crippling their 
strength as in a moment, and filling them with dismay. 
A nation sometimes gives up faith in Him. But there is 
a law of His kingdom, which makes religion necessary to 
national weal, and so these misguided men, who thought 
to drive God out of His world, find Him coming back 
armed with terrors, a consuming fire, a dread avenger. 
They shall see Him though they bandage their eyes 
against the flashes of His lightnings ; He will bring Him- 
self back to their minds ; men shall know there is a God 
that judgeth in the earth. 

And secondly, God draws good out of evil. As in 
storm, and flood, and lightning, so here His final purpose 
is beneficent, although, through the perversity of man, not 
always attained. Sometimes He chastises their pride, and 
a humbled nation, bowing in repentance before Him, will 
henceforth have in its hand the key of prosperity, will 
respect the rights of others more, and learn lessons more 
readily. Sometimes a vast structure of injustice on which 
they set their hearts, which they upheld by all sophistry 
in defiance of truth and God, is made the source of their 
present ruin, but out of the trunk grows up again a vigor- 
ous tree, which will flourish for ages. A lesson of justice 
has been burnt into them which they will not forget. 
Sometimes they cast God away in voluptuous refine- 
ment and heartless skepticism. They are punished by 
dissolution of civil order, by wild passions in society, by 
strife of class with class, by political revolution. They 
are shaken until they acknowledge God again and become 
able to have an orderly and established government. 

Thus, nations lose their stability when they come into 
conflict with the stability of God, with those principles of 
eternal truth and justice, which are deeper foundations of 
His throne than natural law and infinite power. So has 
it been in our case. A nation enjoying every blessing 5 
has suddenly been thrown into the thickest of a political 



The Stability of God's Throne. 329 

storm most vast and terrible. And why ? Because it 
lifted itself up in pride and boastfulness, because it sanc- 
tioned manifest political injustice, and fell into political 
corruption. God would not let it perish without an earn- 
est attempt to save it. How signal has been the chastise- 
ment! The more guilty part of the land has been led in 
demoniac madness into a state where they are ground as 
between the upper and nether millstone. The less guilty 
has been called to severe sacrifices, to humiliation, to 
anxiety, to the discovery of its dependence on God, and it 
knows not what it is destined still to endure. May we 
not hope, however, that when this war shall end, when the 
Lord on High shall have shown Himself mightier than the 
noise of many waters, this nation, stripped of its political 
injustice, humbled, made more honest, seeing God in its 
history, will be prepared for a bright and high destiny ? 
May we not hope, that, mended like a watch, and moving 
in harmony with divine order, it will fulfill its high 
calling, which it had, in a great measure, abandoned, of 
spreading a sense of justice, a pure political example, the 
blessings of freedom and of the Gospel, through the 
nations? 

IV. The Psalmist passes on by an easy sequence to teach 
us that God's testimonies or precepts are sure, that is, are 
true, permanent, and to be relied upon. If the swelling 
waters that lift up their voice are symbols of disorder 
among nations as well as in nature, the transition is yet 
more smooth; for f.om the majesty and power of God as 
displayed against rebellious nations we go directly to His 
precepts which they luive violated and which lie upholds 
by His judgments. 

From the stability of nature we could not infer at once 
the stability of the moral system. But our nature com- 
pels us to refer this stability of nature to God, and to 
attribute to the author of nature a moral character, a 
plan of government, a kingdom. Nay, if we should sepa- 



330 The Stability of God's Throne. 

rate in thought the natural attributes in God from the 
moral, they would, standing alone, awaken no respect in 
us ; a king of limited power, but with a soul alive to 
justice, would stand higher in our veneration. 

But if God has a moral nature it must be a fixed one. 
The great system of righteousness must take a permanent 
place in a mind of boundless wisdom, which has no bia.ses 
and needs no experience. And not only this, but the 
moral in God's sight must have a far higher value than 
the physical ; righteousness is the stability of His throne ; 
it were better for heaven and earth to pass away than 
that He should favor or sanction one jot of injustice. If 
so, His precepts are sure, they can never be abrogated, 
never be made light of. They are the reliance of all who 
love righteousness, individuals or nations. And thus 
holiness becomes His house for ever. Having a charac- 
ter of holiness which will never alter, He demands a like 
disposition from those who worship Him. The forms of 
His worship may change, but its essence is the same for 
ever, spiritual union with God, consecration to Him as a 
holy, wise, true, merciful King and Father. 

1. In closing this subject I remark first that whatever 
adds to the strength of the conviction that God and His 
precepts are immovable, adds also to the power of the 
righteous in this world. We live in a world of irregulari- 
ties where good and evil seem to have oftentimes about 
equal strength ; nay, the complaint has arisen in many age3 
from the servants of God that evil is the strongest. To 
meet this faintness of heart God appeals to His omnipo- 
tence. " Lift up your eyes on high and behold who hath 
created these things, that bringeth out their host by 
number, why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O 
Israel ! my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment 
is passed over from my God ? " Shall He who spread the 
heavens as a tent to dwell in, who created the earth, and 



The Stability of God's Throne. 331 

settled it on its foundation, shall He have no stability of 
purposes, no uniformity of views in regard to what takes 
place among men ? No, it cannot be ! He must hate 
fraud, injustice, faithlessness, malice and furious rage 
more than you can, O Christian. Confide in Him then. 
Go forth to your work in the world with courage, trusting 
in the unchangeable righteousness of God. Every thing 
right that you do as a man, a citizen, a Christian, has His 
sympathy. He unchangeably loves right and must love 
you. Is not a man strong, will not a church or a right- 
eous nation be strong, if it can entertain faith like this ? 

2. Times of natural and moral convulsion are pre-emi- 
nently times calculated to bring God before the mind. 
They bring Him from behind the cloud, He seems to 
show His face, and to those who humble themselves 
before Him He speaks words of encouragement and hope. 
We have already referred to God's dealings with the nations 
that lift up their wild cries against His sway, as seen in 
His punishments and corrections. In this way Napoleon 
was a preacher of righteousness to Europe ; as the scourge 
of God he awakened many from their dreary infidelity 
and atheism. A German gentleman once told me that 
amid the disasters of Prussia, about the time of the battle 
of Jena, he first began to feel that there was a God in the 
earth, having been a Pantheist before. And not only do 
the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness at such 
times, but the servants of God are brought near to Him. 
Humbled before His majesty for their sins, they are fit to 
be exalted. Seeing God in His majesty they trust in His 
strength, in His righteousness. They are enabled to com- 
mit the interests which are dear to Him into His hands 
with the assurance that He will do well. They rejoice in 
His control, and love Him when He smites them and 
theirs. In the noble words of Tennyson their love and 
faith 



332 The Stability of God's Throne, 

" Hear at times a sentinel 
That moves about from place to place, 
And whispers to the vast of space 
Among the worlds that all is well. 
And all is well, though faith and form 
Be sundered in the night of fear; 
Well roars the storm to those that hear 
A deeper voice across the storm." 

3. How glorious the system of God will appear to those 
who shall see it in its oneness and completion. 

Microscopic beauty, wonders on a small scale or for a 
brief space of time, suits our minds now, but immense 
outlines, long stretching plans are too great for us. With 
God one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years 
as one day ; but it requires a special training for man to 
rise to the comprehension of His counsels, so that the 
brief experiences of our lives are constantly coming into 
conflict with what He has made known to us concerning 
Himself. And if we were merely individuals, without the 
bond of race and the experiences of the race, we could 
have no conception of a great plan running on through 
time, and destined to issue in something glorious when 
time shall end. 

Of such a plan He makes us aware in His word, and 
the stability of His character, His unalterable wisdom, is 
pledged to carry it through. History, when it arises to 
the height of some critical epoch in the world's affairs 
and looks through many ages, confirms the existence of 
such a plan ; although, if revelation did not furnish the 
key it could not solve the mysteries of Providence, nor 
be quite sure that there is a Providence. 

Faith and hope, which are prophetic powers in a ser- 
vant of God, go still farther : they argue from His char- 
acter and His promises, the certainty, the stability of His 
system. Hence, the visions of fai'th are sometimes rap- 
turous. But how much more glorious will be the aspect 
of the system to those who shall be initiated in a future 



The Stability of God's Throne. 333 

life, into the wondrous counsels of God; who shall see 
beginning, middle and end; the interruptions, the oppo- 
sitions, the steps forward, the victory, the closing triumph? 
God will not seem slow or slack then, but majestic, 
almighty, all-wise, one and the same through the whole 
drama. We look upon some vast mountain of solid rock ; 
we call to mind that it has defied the elements for ages ; 
the flood rose and fell leaving it as it was, the rains and 
snows have scarcely made an impression on its surface; it 
has outlasted all human works and will stand until the 
doom. Such, to illustrate great things by small, will the 
stability of God's system appear, when surveyed and 
traced out from the heights of Heaven. But even in this 
world, we may expect that at some future time, there will 
be a most profound impression pervading mankind, of 
the stability and oneness of God's counsels ; general his- 
tory will, one day, be more wrought out than now, and 
will be brought into harmony with revelation. When such 
a time shall come, the world will appear to be one more than 
now, and the race one, and the counsels of God one from 
their germ to their perfect fulfillment. Then the perverted 
will of man, the schemes of imperial power, the theories 
sanctifying injustice, the great systems of oppression will 
seem to have been used by God to spread His glory. As 
then the enlightened eye shall look back on obstacles, 
which, at their time, seemed insurmountable, but have 
now faded away in the distance, — on the wrath of man 
opposing God or defying Him, on revolutions in opinion 
and in society, they will seem like the storm of yesterday, 
which has left no trace on the sky, while the steady laws 
of God run their constant race. "God has triumphed, 
He has triumphed;" they will then say: "The floods 
lifted up their voice, the floods lifted up their waves. 
The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many 
waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." And so 
we may hope that human experience, running down in 



334 The Stability of God's Throne. 

the channel of history, will unite with faith and revela- 
tion ; that a rectified opinion of mankind will ascribe to 
God His proper majesty and His place in the affairs of 
men; that a deep conviction of the stability of God's 
moral system, of the unchangeableness of His holiness, 
will drive unrighteousness from the world, and help to 
purify the nations.* 

* Written in 1862. 



SERMON XXIIL 

THE STABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

Isaiah Ix. 20, 21 (in part). The Lord shall be thine everlasting light — . 
Thy people shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever. 

Isaiah lxvi. 22. As the new heavens and new earth, which I will 
make shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and 
your name remain. 

The Christian Church is not the conqueror of the 
Jewish polity, but the heir and successor. The new cove- 
nant has been developed out of the old. There was no 
break when Christ came, but a fulfilment and a comple- 
tion. And so the promises were handed down in the 
Christian line, among which these from the latter part 
of Isaiah, relating to the stability of the ancient Church, 
are not the least remarkable. They declare that God is 
an everlasting light to His people, that their permanence 
is like the permanence of the creation of God. 

The permanence of the Christian Church in the world, 
if it be a fact, is unlike all facts of history. Everything 
human decays and passes away. All institutions, forms 
of government, civilizations, have their day and decline. 
No one doubts that the old religions of India and its 
castes are doomed to perish. We cannot, therefore, be 
assured from history, that Christianity may not perish 
also. Still, when you look at its origin, its power of 
growth, its vitality, when everything around was dead; 
its changes of form joined to unchangeableness of prin- 
ciple ; its power to correct evils within its pale ; its pre- 
dominance among the influences that act on mankind; its 
universal character, and its consciousness — so to speak — 
that the world is its own, you cannot feel it to be otherwise 

335 



336 The Stability of the Christian Church. 

than quite probable that it is to be man's guide to the end 
of time. 

Think how, at the first, before a church, in the externa! 
sense of the word, arose, before a compactly organized 
body, acting together in all places, with officers guided by 
a common spirit, sent its power over the v/orld, — how, at 
its very birth, it was strong to resist and to oppose, and 
strangled the serpents sent to destroy it in its very cradle. 
What courage, what feeling of strength there was in 
those men who went forth alone to preach Christ, cal- 
culating beforehand that they should die in the struggle, 
but sure that they were planting that which should live. 
Or cast your eyes on that later time, when in all quiet, by 
simple appeal to men's hearts, it spread itself over the 
Roman empire, disarmed persecutors, got supreme power 
into its hands, and rooted out the forms of heathenism. 
Here it showed itself not only stable but dominant, and 
this very dominion, by bringing causes of corruption 
within the Church, put it to the severest test. But its 
stability stood the test. It showed an inward vitality in 
the cures which it applied to its own disease. The power 
of self-reformation in a man, or in bodies political or reli- 
gious, is surely an indication of an inward life. Or, if you 
look at what the Church is doing now — bringing back the 
apostolic age in endeavors to convert the world, grap- 
pling with all the hard problems of society, standing its 
ground against the metaphysics of pantheism and of sen- 
sation, and raising the standard of personal godliness, — 
you find her animated by the same spirit, and at the old 
problem with renewed courage. Thus, though history is 
not prophecy, though it cannot with authority predict the 
universal and final sway of Christ's Gospel and of Chris- 
tian institutions, it reveals, at the least, a working power, 
a tenacity of life, a hopefulness, a benevolent energy, 
which are not inconsistent with stability and with continu- 
ance until the end of time. 



The Stability of the Christian Church. 337 

To what is this stability due? We shall look at several 
causes to which it is not due, but to which, on a superfi- 
cial view, it might be ascribed ; and then, shall endeavor 
to show how in right reason it may be accounted for. 

It is not owing, then, to strength borrowed from govern- 
ments. A Roman pro-consul in Asia Minor, writing to 
his emperor, in the year 104, could say that the conta- 
gious superstition of the Christians had then spread not 
only through cities, but through villages and the open 
country, until the heathen temples had become desolate, 
the sacred festivals were neglected, and victims for sacri- 
fice were in little demand. To stop this, was the office of 
persecution. Thus the Church grew without help from 
the government ; it grew also in spite of long efforts of 
the government to destroy it ; whenever it has been pro- 
tected by the State, it has been injured in proportion to 
the closeness of the union, and it has flourished most 
when most left to itself. It submits to all sorts of re- 
straints and grows ; it grows under neglect, but the embrace 
of the powers of the world tends to stifle it. It can no 
more form an alliance with those who have the power 
and the glory of the world in their gift, than its Master 
could bow down and worship the tempter, bringing in his 
hand the same offerings. 

Nor is the stability of the Church due to the stability 
of its forms of discipline and order. These have passed 
through a great variety of changes, from the times of the 
nascent Church, when there was little of established 
order, down through the ages of hierarchy, to our times, 
when the Church thrives in a great variety of forms, and 
with varied theories of government. Some forms indeed 
injure it, because they interfere with its spirituality and 
its freedom, but it remains at this time to be proved, that 
the Gospel cannot accommodate itself to any order of 
discipline which permits its untrammeled development; 
and its future form of organization is still a problem : we 



338 The Stability of the Christian Church. 

cannot tell whether it will be outwardly one or outwardly 
many, and, if one, what will be its shape. 

Nor yet is the stability of the church owing to the sta- 
bility of theological systems. It grew, it almost reigned, 
before any received dogmatic statements of its sacred truth 
Were current. It has outlived theories and expositions 
innumerable, and indeed nothing connected with Christi- 
anity has been more changing than the scientific arrange- 
ments of its truths. We do not deny that a theology 
incorporating falsehood into its system may be detrimental 
to the Church and to the soul, but it is refreshing to 
think that within certain limits of variation in its the- 
ology its faith and hope are the same. The same Gospel 
cheers and vitalizes two opposite churches which denounce 
one another : Augustine and the Greek Fathers, Luther 
and Zwingli, Calvin and Arminius, Whitefield and 
Wesley thought differently, but at the bottom felt and 
hoped alike. Amid all the varying chimes of theological 
bells the same old hymn has been sung by the church, 
" Blessing and glory and honor and power be unto Him 
who sitteth on the throne and to the Lamb forever." 

Nor can the stability of the church be explained by 
saying that it got the control of opinion and kept thought 
in leading strings, so that when science was emancipated, 
new conditions full of danger to the church began. It 
arose in spite of a reigning heathen opinion and philoso- 
phy, which it overthrew and put another in the place. 
It has in its healthiest state favored all knowledge in the 
confidence of being itself together with every other true 
thing from God. That some opinion and some science 
have been hostile to it and would undermine it, if univer- 
sally admitted, is beyond question, and could not be 
otherwise. That on the other hand some received dogmas 
of the Church may have to be modified or thrown away 
is quite possible, but nothing as yet shows that there is 
on the part of physical science, as obtained by a study of 



The Stability of the Christian Church. 339 

nature, or of history, the science of human progress, a 
hostility or even a want of sympathy with the Church 
and with the Saviour. 

Nor, lastly, can the stability of the Church be attributed 
to the condescending patronage of large-minded men, who 
saw in its justice and humanity a help for the world to be 
found no where else, but yet did not believe in it them- 
selves. There have been such men without doubt, who 
have held Christianity to be an excellent religion for the 
masses, who would uphold it even by law and by establish- 
ments, but did not call themselves Christians. But in 
truth they have had very little hand in sustaining the 
Church. Perhaps their not entirely honest relation to 
the Gospel may have done more harm than their support 
did good. It is not unlikely that if they had persecuted 
the Church, they would have done it still more good. 
And it seems quite certain that such aid on earthly 
grounds to religion will do little good and little harm to 
those who seek the heavenly, to those who will have a 
religion from God if they can find it in the universe, to 
those whose justice and humanity and pains-taking for 
mankind flow out of Christ the fountain, and out of irre- 
pressible convictions in their own hearts. 

To what, then, is the stability of the Church due, if all 
these reasons are to be set aside? And to this question 
it is no sufficient answer that the Holy Spirit is ever in and 
with the Church. For the Spirit's office is to act on men 
according to the laws of character by Divine realities. The 
question, then, still recurs, to what causes in the hands of 
the Divine Agent is the permanence of the Christian 
Church to be ascribed? 

I. It is due, I mention in the first place, to this: that 
the Gospel, on which the Church is built, works out some 
of the great problems which lie on the heart of man, in a 
w r ay to give lasting peace and satisfaction to the soul. I 
refer to practical rather than to intellectual problems, 



340 The Stability of the Christian Church. 

although even the restless questionings of the mind either 
meet with an answer from the divine oracles, or are carried 
up into a higher realm of truth. The power inherent in 
Christianity itself, as a way of reconciling God and man, 
and of raising man above sin by great truths and great 
hopes, is a real and a permanent power. It is suited to 
all natures and capacities, to all races and times. Of 
course, if a soul or an age rejects the Gospel, it can have 
no effect on life as long as the unbelief lasts; but unbelief 
is a forlorn state for every earnest mind. As unbelief 
consists of mere denials and doubts, it only increases the 
natural unrest which is the fruit of sin. The proofs of the 
truth of the Gospel are not demonstrations, so that it does 
not rise above the possibility of being doubted and re- 
jected. But it puts its trust not on its cogent arguments, 
addressed to the understanding, but chiefly on those ap- 
peals to the soul which carry with them their own evidence 
and gain the consent of the whole nature. True, doubts 
will arise in the intellectual region after the reception of 
Christianity, as clouds in the atmosphere: there is no 
known, there is no possible explanation to the full of the 
relations between the finite and the infinite. These, how- 
ever, are of small account, if the experience of the soul as- 
sures it, that there is a light above the clouds, a real Sun 
in which there is no darkness at all. 

We assume in what we say, that mankind need and will 
have some religion. It is as necessary for the race to be 
bound to God by this cord, as to be bound together in so- 
cieties by institutions and governments. For this reason, 
when Christianity is first thrown among pagans, it may 
naturally be looked on as an enemy. It strips souls of 
their hopes, and they know not what it has to offer to fill 
Up the gap. Hence opposition, persecution, the death or 
exile of those who bring the tidings from heaven to unen- 
lightened coasts. But it conquers, because man is, or at 
least some men are, prepared for it. It tells them what 



The Stability of the Christian Church. 34:1 

they half knew before, it offers an unspeakably great gift, 
it comes with an honest countenance that silences suspi- 
cion and distrust- Frivolous souls turn from it, but they 
do not make opinion, they pass for nothing in the general 
weight of affairs ; while earnest souls, even in paganism, 
have a longing for something higher than they can reach, 
and if satisfied, will die for their convictions. " This was 
the God I called upon to save my child," said an Indian 
woman to Mayhew, when he, for the first time, preached 
the Gospel to the Nantucket Indians, and she received the 
message which spoke of divine pity. Her heart was ready 
for a resurrection, and the voice of Christ raised her from 
the dead. 

And so the Gospel, as it travels along the ages, finds 
many who will not open their hearts to it, but finds many 
others who count it their chief treasure. They feel it to 
be solid ground. It does not quake under their feet. Its 
hopes and motives last for a life- time, and they expect to 
live with its steady light shining upon them until their 
eyes close in death. 

If, on the other hand, Christ had furnished man only 
with a relief from the earthly woes of a corrupt religion, a 
vicious society, a grinding despotism, His Gospel might 
have been embraced and diffused, but, as soon as conquest 
and a new race had overturned the old order of things, 
such a secular Gospel would have fulfilled its work, and, 
like all the births of time, have been swallowed up by 
time. Or if there had been a flaw in it, if it had not 
worn well, as tested by experience, if it had offered what it 
could not give, had promised rest to souls whose unrest no 
physician of souls could remove, the weakness of its pre- 
tensions would have been found out. The second or third 
century would have witnessed its decline. On the other 
hand, the stability of the conviction presupposed and con- 
firmed by Christianity, the lasting satisfaction attendant on 
its method of salvation, the unchangeable grandeur of its 



3-12 The Stability of the Christian Church. 

aims, and of the motives by which it acts on mankind, its 
peace and joy which are found to be abiding — these, tested 
by experience, insure the stability of the Church, composed 
of minds the same in their wants, and in their capacity of 
receiving spiritual realities. 

II. The stability of the Church is due, in the second 
place, to those permanent features of the Gospel, which 
bind men together in a brotherhood pervaded by the 
spirit of love and fellowship. It would be a great thing if 
each soul lived by itself in its own separate sphere, amid 
incommunicable joys and hopes. And there is, indeed, in 
every Christian breast a closed and locked chamber of 
most inward feelings, where God and Christ alone are the 
guests. But hoAV poor and unsuited for such natures as 
ours would a religion be, which lived thus beyond the eyes 
and ears of friends and fellow-men, which was no bond or 
cement of society, no companion in social life ! Is it not 
one of the highest glories of Christianity, if there is that in 
it which fits it to enter into the common interests of men, 
which ties believing souls together, makes them one body, 
unites them in common worship, causes them to express 
their feeling of brotherhood in Christian institutions, and 
gives them that spirit of mutual help, which renders the 
whole community strong ? That there are such principles 
of union, which not only bring different minds into har- 
mony, but almost of necessity give birth to institutions, 
there can be no doubt. The existence of the Church of 
Christ was involved in the Gospel itself, and it would have 
grown up without any positive rules, from the necessities 
of Christian intercourse, or of Christian instruction, from 
the impulse of common feelings, from a common faith and 
common hopes. Man has been called a political animal, 
as led by the cravings of his nature to enter not only into 
society, but into society which is organized under law and 
government, and has thus a permanent life. But much 
more will a Church grow out of the spirit of the Gospel, 



The Stability of the Christian Church. 343 

because here not only society, but brotherhood, a fellowship 
of similar minds, is provided for by the very spirit with 
which Christ is received into the heart. This brotherhood, 
furthermore, must be stable and permanent, because Christ 
and the relations of believers to Him are permanent ; be- 
cause the Scriptures are in a fixed form, and because the 
needs and the aims of a spiritual life, and the hopes of 
immortal life, are permanent. 

But here an objection is made ; it will be said that the 
church has changed and must change ; that within a par- 
ticular church there are diversities of intelligence, of char- 
acter, of Christian progress, of degree of faith which cannot 
fully be united, and that in the general body of believers 
there is no external, and little internal union. In the 
Catholic church, as soon as intelligence overcame the stag- 
nation and paralysis of the middle ages, sects of philosophy 
began to dispute, monks of different orders quarrelled, the 
papal and the episcopal principles, or monarchy and aris- 
tocracy, contended together. In the Protestant world the 
right of private judgment carries division much farther 
still, and dogmatic differences are here of far higher im- 
portance than in Catholic Christendom, where a generally 
received authority puts a check on the excesses of private 
judgment. 

We accept of this summary of facts as a fair one, with 
whatever spirit it may be made. We do not believe either 
that the right of controlling the opinions of the major part 
of society by a select few has any validity, nor do we be- 
lieve multiplicity of sects to be a blessing. We do not see 
that there is any pledge in the Gospel against corruptions, 
against abuse of Christian liberty, against infusing human 
ingredients of weakness into the divinely constituted 
church. The problem here, as in society, is to harmonize 
liberty and order. The problem is not to avoid all change, 
to bind men with fetters, so that they shall think and act 
exactly as Christians did in the age of August in, or even 



344 The Stability of the Christian Church. 

in the age of the apostles. It is the great desideratum to 
have a church flexible and yet fixed, obedient to the ne- 
cessities of the times, yet adhering to the unchanging prin- 
ciples of Christianity. Just as in the English constitution, 
with all its great alterations since the sixteenth century, 
there have been certain fixed principles of justice, certain 
fixed, or nearly fixed, rights of the people, certain political 
landmarks ; so and much more is it with the Church, or 
if I must so say, the churches of Christ. There is an evil 
in divisions into sects, as there is in strata of society. But 
the real church under all its shapes subsists through all the 
evils. With heart-burnings and jealousies and unfounded 
suspicions there is a general unity. They sing each other's 
hymns, they pray together, in affliction they comfort one 
another by the same grand truths treasured up in the di- 
vine word. God's forgiving love, Christ's sacrifice of 
Himself for all, the Holy Spirit leading Christian hearts 
into purity and peace, the foundations of morality in love 
and obedience, immortal hopes — these precious things fixed 
as the solid mountains are dear to all in spite of differences 
in dogma or in discipline. The time may come, and seems 
approaching, when there shall be no mystical Quakers, no 
logical Calvinists, no emotional Methodists, no Baptists or 
Ritualists shut up within the close pale of a rite or of a 
church, but even now the true church runs through and 
into them all, as true to the general principles as if there 
had been no separation. Nay more, I cannot help believ- 
ing that the time is not a great way off when godly Ro- 
man Catholics, as they hold to the same conversion from 
sin with Protestants, to the same sacrifice of Christ, to the 
same love from God and to God, will find their hearts too 
large for their narrow church, will hold to a brotherhood 
of saints in which all partake, and will say, as was said in 
apostolic times, " We believe that through the grace of the 
Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved even as they." 

Ill, And this leads us thirdly to remark that the Church 



The Stability of the Christian Church. 345 

owes its permanence in part also to its self-reforming 
capacity. We hinted at this in the beginning of our 
discourse, but it is too great a thing for a brief and passing 
mention. 

The human and the divine have ever mingled and will 
ever mingle in the historical progress of Christianity, as 
they mingle in the development of a Christian life. No 
thinker, who rightly weighs past facts or the nature of the 
case, can expect that a supernatural religion will keep out 
all corruption from its own province. Men and ages may 
fall away from the high standard of Christian life, which 
the gospel holds up, and so they will pervert the truth, 
for surely the idea is preposterous that a fallen man or a 
fallen age will cling to the truth with the same fidelity and 
interest which were showed in days of unworldliness and 
purity. " It must needs be that offences come." " In the 
latter times some shall depart from the faith." "Many 
shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the 
way of truth shall be evil spoken of." Such sayings of 
Christ and His Apostles are our guide. Full of good 
sense, they show that Christianity was neither founded nor 
spread by idealists who thought that a world of sin would 
offer no trials or sources of corruption to their followers. 
They encountered bitter opposition, they expected to die 
for the truth, and they did not rate the corrupting influ- 
ences of the world upon a successful and triumphant 
Church at all too low. 

There are then unavoidable sources of corruption in the 
revolutions of society, in the growth of wealth, in the love 
of self-gratification, in the increase of worldly comforts. 
There are other sources in the ignorance of untrained 
Christians, in the ambition of the clergy, and their love of 
dominion, in the rewards offered within the Church to the 
aspiring, in formalism, in a dead orthodoxy. With the 
('on version of Constantino came, as an ancient Christian 
writer says, an unspeakable amount of hypocrisy into the 



3-.LG The Stability of the Christian Church. 

Church. T)j3 conquest of Europe by the Germanic race, 
necessary as it was for the ultimate good of the Church 
and of mankind, spread over that continent brutal half- 
heathen men, ignorant of every thing, and this revolution 
in society could not but retard the progress of Christian 
light, as well as bring bad men into the Church itself, 
But the ivorst of all corruptions are those silent ones which 
arise from a decaying or a material or a hollow civilization, 
which creep over men's souls to destroy the energy of 
Christian life and neutralize the power of Christian truth. 
Now how are these corruptions to be removed ? The 
answer is that at the lowest ebb of Christian life and know- 
ledge there remain within the reach of the Church the 
sources of a better spiritual state, so that it can reform itself 
as it has done more than once. First, as long as the 
Bible is acknowledged as an authority, there is an appeal 
to it from all other authorities, from popes, and councils, 
and philosophers, and the current opinion of the time. 
Next, there are at the times of greatest declension men 
who are somehow led, as we believe, by the Divine Spirit 
concurring with the word, into a deeper experience ; they 
rise above their times, they reach convictions which are 
irrepressible, they must proclaim to the world at any cost 
what they found out as the resting-places of their souls ; 
they become the starting points of a reform which sweeps 
over all Christian nations. Let, for instance, the grand 
truth of free remission of sins, without our works and 
deservings through the mediation of Christ, be obscured in 
the Church or half-forgotten, some man will appear who 
has learned it anew from the Bible, and from the experi- 
ence through which his own soul bas past. From him 
that reform, that rectification of opinion and life, which he 
has undergone, will spread all around ; nor can any 
tyranny over human thought, any dread of public avowals 
of faith, any fear of the consequences of separation wholly 
destroy the movement. Thus the Church is ever coming 



The Stability of the Christian Church. 347 

back to the old principles and feelings, because the Bible is 
the same Booh, old yet new, the treasure-house of spiritual 
power, and because when it is believed the same old effects 
follow that showed themselves when Christ was first 
preached. 

IV Lastly the stability of the Church is ensured by the 
stability of Christ. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to- 
day and forever." Here we will dwell not on the objective 
truth which clusters around Christ, and emanates from 
Him as the centre of the system and its essence, so much 
as on Christ fitted by His nature and work to be the at- 
traction of the Christian soul. If the truth which lies at 
the foundation of Christianity could lose its hold on the 
minds of men, of course the Church and all positive re- 
ligion, together with the meaning of life and the best 
qualities of modern civilization, would perish. But the 
hold which Christianity has depends on Christ, and the 
hold which Christ has is chiefly dependent on those perso- 
nal affections and the reverential regards which souls that 
receive Christ entertain towards Him. Every thing then 
in the stability and durability of the Church turns on 
these two points ; whether He is fitted to attract the soul 
towards Himself, and whether any change of feeling to- 
wards Him can be detected in Christian minds through 
new tendencies of thought or of civilization, or through 
any other cause. 

As it regards the first point no one can doubt, taking 
Christ's personal life and work together, that He is fitted 
to draw all men unto Himself. If Christians or any great 
number of them really love Him with a love surpassing 
that which they feel towards the nearest earthly friend, 
if He has held His place for centuries so that Christian 
poetry and painting, Christian song in its union of voice 
and music, all love to draw their subjects from His life 
and death, this is pretty good proof of what has boon (he 
cord that binds the soul to Christ. So it was yesterday. 



34:3 The Stability of the Christian Church. 

Is it so to-day, and will it be so forever t Wc may be 
certain of this, that there never will be a new edition of 
Christianity with Christ left out of it. If He is given up 
all positive religion, all authority which speaks to us men 
from beyond our own nature will perish with Him. He 
is the principal part ; the drama would be stale and empty 
without Him. But are there no signs of a rejection of 
Christ, and can He stand the mass of attacks, critical, his- 
torical, metaphysical which are made against Him? 
There are signs of a conflict from which some return with 
deeper confidence to the Saviour, simplifying their faith 
by pointing it more exclusively towards Him ; while 
others go away and deny Him, yet generally not without 
deep reverence for His character. And thus we see that 
in the struggles of doubt His character rises above all 
questions. It remains amid all the difficulties with which 
the understanding concerns itself, a point of attraction for 
the soul, an assurance of His sincerity, a proof that His 
clear consciousness of what He ivas did not deceive Him. 
Christ then is a fixed Saviour for the present and for the 
future. Doubt is of to-day, but He is of all time. Once 
let a soul feel its sins and have a longing for a better life, 
and turn in simplicity to Christ, and discover how He can 
satisfy its longings, and how in all boldness and in all 
love He reveals Himself as its Saviour, that is all ; — He is 
received and loved. He is a permanent possession for the 
soul. He does not wear out in a life-time. He is the per- 
manent possession of the Church in all its ages and 
changes. He does not wear out while there are men to 
long for redemption. He is, in the words of the Apoca- 
lypse, " The true and faithful witness, the first-begotten 
from the dead ; " and so the Church cries out, in the 
words which follow these, " Unto Him that loved us and 
washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made 
us kings and priests unto God and His Father, to Him be 
glory and dominion forever." 



The Stability of the Christian Church. 349 

The stability of the Church, we add in closing, is fitted 
to inspire us with courage. It may have its ups and 
downs, its bright days and dark days : men's hearts, when 
they see doubt, denial, the follies and the faults of Chris- 
tians, may fail them for fear, but it is an unreasonable 
fear. Doubt about your own endurance, if you will, 
although that is the part of little faith ; but do not doubt 
that principles of salvation, which have stood their ground 
against sin in so many minds in all the varying forms of 
society, can work out and will work out the same results 
and more glorious ones in the future. If the Gospel has 
ever corrected your mistakes and follies, believe, as you 
may fairly, that it may do the same for the Church. If 
it has held its own and perhaps made advances in your 
heart, believe that it can do the same in the world. If 
you have had times of trial or of darkness, and the Gos- 
pel was your stay, believe that it may be the general stay 
of all believers. Let your experience put new life into 
the promises of God, and the promises will put new life 
into you. To this we must come at last, that whatever 
Christ can do for us He can do for all ; that if we can 
testify to an abiding hold of His Gospel on our souls it 
has in itself stability, and the Church built on it has stability 
also. 



SERMON XXIV. 

LONGINGS FOR THE HEAVENLY CITY. 

Hebrews xi. 14-16. 14. For they that say such things declare 
plainly that they seek a country : 15. And truly, if they had been mind- 
ful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had 
opportunity to have returned. 16. But now they desire a better country, 
that is a heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; 
for he hath prepared for them a city. 

The language which comes from the lives of godly men 
is that they are pilgrims and strangers on earth. Such 
was the declaration made by the patriarch Jacob to the 
king of Egypt when he inquired of him his age. " The 
days of the years of my pilgrimage," he replied, " are an 
hundred and thirty years ; few and evil have the days of 
the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the 
days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of 
their pilgrimage." This confession of being a pilgrim was 
not drawn from the patriarch by his feeling of the short- 
ness of life, for he considered his fathers who had reached a 
much greater age as pilgrims also. Neither was it drawn 
from him by the feeling that his life had been passed 
among strangers away from his kindred and the graves of 
his ancestors. For as the sacred writer says, if such had 
been the feeling of the patriarchs, if they had sought an 
earthly fatherland, they had constant opportunities to re- 
turn ; they needed only to cross the Euphrates at the same 
old ford in order to find their kindred again and be among 
the traditions of their fathers. But this was not what they 
meant, when they felt as pilgrims and longed for a home. 
The longing was a spiritual one ; and even should we sup- 
pose that they knew little of a future life, their feeling was 
an aspiration for more of God and of blessedness in God 
350 



Longings for the Heavenly City. 351 

than they could have here. They had a kind of sacred 
discontent with the best that earth could give, and a sense 
that without more maturity in godliness and more know- 
ledge of God the end of their existence was unfulfilled. 
This was the deep source from which their pilgrim feeling 
proceeded ; and hence the feeling continued, as long as 
they were away from God. They thus recognized God as 
their portion, and in turn He was not ashamed to be called 
their God, that is, not their object of worship but their pro- 
teeter and guardian. Well He might thus be called, for 
He had prepared for them a city. He would not suffer 
these longings of theirs, which were founded on faith and 
love to Him, to be unsatisfied. He had built a city on 
purpose for their reception. They were to have, instead 
of tabernacles, in which they removed from one pasturage 
to another, a settled home; instead of a dwelling among 
strangers a dwelling among the truest friends, instead of a 
lonely tent a thronged city, instead of a residence without 
rights or security,* a share in that safe commonwealth, that 
heavenly polity over which God reigns. 

The text, as thus expounded, supplies us with several 
subjects for reflection, among which I name first the long- 
ing which the godly have for something better than this 
world can give. Here we may notice first of all the differ- 
ence in hind between this longing and sinful discontent on 
the one hand, and the difference between it and the noble 
aspirations of worldly minds on the other. 

I. Discontent is the spirit of self-will, displeased with 
the ordinances of God, or denying a providence and com- 
plaining of its destiny. This temper is insubordinate, for 
it would remove the disposal of things out of God's hands : 
it is proud and selfish, for so far from being willing to 
take an humble place in the universe it would take the 
highest, and bend everything to its own arrangements : 
it is ivorldly, for the excessive desire of earthly good, which 
by the nature of the case must be ungratiiied, gives it 



352 Longings Jot the Jleavenly City. 

birth : it is not only miserable in itself, but the source of new 
misery, for it leads the soul to look on the dark side of its 
earthly lot, and to make the most of whatever counteracts 
the desires. 

Compare with this discontent the temper of the godly 
man, as he looks with dissatisfaction upon this world. He 
may be in a depressed condition of life and surrounded 
by the wrecks of hopes, but his tendency is not to com- 
plain or to chafe against the dispensations of God. He is 
not dissatisfied with trials as such, for he views them as 
iD tended to bring him into a state of holiness which will 
more than make up for them. He is not dissatisfied with 
God's providence, for he sees in it infinite reason and love. 
He is not even dissatisfied with the world, for the reason 
that his renewed nature has lowered his expectations and 
anxieties in regard to worldly good, and changed his esti- 
mate of the nature of blessedness. There is then in his 
feelings nothing of disappointment, or of that bitterness 
towards human life, which we call misanthropy, and 
which is as truly hatred of God, as it is hatred of mau. 
He is not disappointed and cannot be, because he has ex- 
pected nothing inordinately great from his outward con- 
dition. He has entrusted his fund of hope to one w T ho 
cannot be false to him : he has laid up his treasure in 
heaven. 

The dissatisfaction of the godly man with this earthly 
life is a feeling which can exist in the highest prosperity, 
w 7 hen the wishes are all gratified, when not a cloud is on 
the sky. It has no reference whatever to external for- 
tunes ; no height of prosperity can extinguish it, and the 
depths of sorrow only increase it. It has a divine source, 
and is aroused by a sense of absence from communion 
more precious than auy on earth, by a sense of imperfec- 
tion which no progress in godliness has repressed, by a 
sense of want of spiritual enjoyment for which no earthly 
enjoyment can compensate. With such a dissatisfaction 



Longings for the Heavenly City. 353 

the highest contentment is compatible. The man may be 
willing, yes, he may rejoice to stay amid his trials and in 
a world of sin, in the hope of working for God and of 
fitting himself for everlasting life. He is not like the 
chained beast which howls with rage and bites his chain, 
nor even like the caged bird, that sings as he flies about 
the walls of his little prison but seizes the first chance to 
escape : he is rather like the soldier in the garrison, with 
whom he has often been compared, weary it may be with 
the constant vigilance and the toilsome defence, but sta- 
tionary until his commander allows him to depart, and 
giving himself up meanwhile, with energy of will, perhaps 
with heroic joy, to the defence of the fortress. 

2. The feeling of the godly man towards this world, so 
unlike the spirit of discontent, resembles much more the 
higher aspirations of mere human nature. There are men 
who seem to have by nature a high standard of character 
and attainment, who, if they lived alone and were unedu- 
cated, would have a certain dignity about them which is 
not allotted to all. These men are not made to be world- 
lings ; the toils of covetousness, the intrigues of ambition 
they despise. If they engage in the pursuits of life, their 
ideal follows them along their whole course. In art, if 
they are artists, it places before them an excellence they 
never reach. In poetry or eloquence, though they may 
give high pleasure to others, they always keep a sense of 
imperfection within themselves. They are philosophers 
not of a sensual school, but of an ideal or spiritual ; they 
live not by the rules of a prudential morality but with 
lofty, perhaps with misty, aims. They set themselves to 
the improvement of their own character or to the reforma- 
tion of mankind. They arc severe, exacting, unsatisfied 
with the present, pushing forwards, it may be to an unat- 
tainable point in the future. 

ISow these men have this resemblance to the godly who 
are our true pilgrims, that they are at a wide remove 



354 Longings for the Heavenly City. 

from earthly-mindedness in its worst sense, that they 
never reach the goal of their choice, and that thus they 
gather a dissatisfaction, often a very great dissatisfaction, 
with themselves and the world. But they differ from 
them in this : that they have not surrendered their native 
self-will, and that their standard, however lofty, is not 
spiritual. As they fail to take their proper place in God's 
kingdom, there is nothing to prevent them from running 
into the wildest complaints in respect to their condition. 
Such men, who most need reliance and submission to God, 
oftenest show the most improper temper, when they are 
disappointed. How much of the biography of genius 
consists of unfulfilled visions, of discontent with one's 
self, and yet of complaints of the world's injustice, of 
weariness of life. How many have taken the work of 
ending this scene of dissatisfaction into their own suicidal 
hands ; unlike the heroic martyr at the stake, who longs 
for the palms of Heaven, but will not shorten the hour of 
agony one jot, since he is witnessing for God. How many 
have lived like Rousseau, jealous, wretched inhabitants of 
this world, neither pleased with themselves nor pleased 
with the attentions of others, unlike the meekly suffering 
Christian, whose cheerfulness is a bright lamp for the feet 
of others, revealing to them the goodness of a divine 
Father. 

And again, these idealists, even the noblest of them all, 
have nothing truly spiritual or godly in their aspirations. 
We must admire them when we find them grasping at 
something beyond the attainment of man ; we must sym- 
pathize with them in their struggles and their despon- 
dency, but we ought not to mistake the quality of their 
endeavors. It is not communion with God, or likeness to 
Him after which they long ; they do not, under the sway 
of the divine promises escape the corruption that is in the 
world through lust, and so become partakers of the divine 
nature. They may retain their aspirations after what is 



Longings for the Heavenly City. 355 

true and great, after perfection in art or science or even 
in character, without lifting their eyes above the level of 
this life, and taking God into view. They are thus essen- 
tially distinct from the religious men after the scriptural 
standard, who, though they may be rude and unlettered, 
though they may have no appreciation of art and no high 
ideal, yet have taken into their souls a longing for God 
and for communion with God. u Their souls thirst for 
God, for the living God ; when shall I come," they cry, 
"and appear before God?" Now, though these aspirations 
may be covered up and half-crushed by sinful worldly 
anxieties, they exist; and they alone fit the soul for a 
higher life, in which more glorious manifestations of God 
will satisfy those who awake in God's likeness. But the 
aspirations of taste, science and self-discipline have no 
such preparatory influence ; they rather take the place of 
that more godlike sort of longing, and cheat the souls 
where they lodge into the persuasion that they need no 
transformation and no purer source of blessedness. 

II. The text leads us to remark in the second place 
that the godly have an opportunity to return to their 
former state and make this world again their portion. 
By not doing this they show that they seek a heavenly 
country. The confessions which proceed from their lips 
and lives prove that the world has not yet satisfied them. 
But if their earthly desires are not subdued and controlled 
by heavenly principles, they have abundant facilities for 
making new experiments upon the world. They can im- 
merse themselves in it again, as they did in their days of 
thoughtlessness. They can assume that their ill success 
in securing for themselves earthly happiness was not 
owing to the nature of man and of the objects offered to 
him in the world, but to. want of prudence or some wrong 
direction of their efforts, or some sinister conjunction of 
circumstances against them. They have the power to 
throw themselves into the pursuit of this kind of good 



356 Longings for the Heavenly City. 

with as much eagerness as the merest worldling. There 
are, moreover, temptations lying in their way, inviting 
them to return to a worldly life, or to remain awhile 
araid earthly enjoyments without thinking of their pil- 
grimage. The world is ready to welcome them back, for 
it does not relish the silent reproofs which a non-con- 
formist to its rules utters, as he withdraws from it. 
There are ways of life for which something plausible cau 
be said, which excuse inordinate, engrossing love of the 
world, and dignify the exclusive minding of earthly 
things with the name of virtue. Add to this that they 
find within themselves something which conspires with 
these outward tempters. They meet with difficulties which 
perplex them; sloth calls them to present repose; fear 
suggests future dangers ; the world to come often seems 
unreal and a great way off; the good they expect shrinks, 
and present good swells in its dimensions. Thus they 
have not only opportunity to return at times, but their 
whole course is filled with such opportunities. Some who 
seemed to be like them have gone back, and made it 
plain that the world was their home, and that they had 
mistaken their way, when they professed to begin the 
pilgrim-life. These have never returned to the path on 
which they set out, and by their careless, quiet satisfac- 
tion with this world condemn those who look beyond it. 
Others are always halting, doubting which way they shall 
go, going forward with averted eyes, and leaving their 
sins with regret. You cannot tell what they are seeking 
most. Certain it is they seem to make no progress on 
their pilgrimage. 

Amid these defections and haltings, these temptations 
and opportunities to return, the man of a heavenly mind 
utters his pilgrim's confession by his life, sings his pilgrim- 
song and goes forward. If his longings had been for 
mere happiness he would have served the world like the 
others. He would have refused to set out for heaven, or 



Longings for the Heavenly City. 357 

have returned, for it is destined for those who have only 
happiness in view to make continual mistakes, to look for 
it where it is not, and fail to see it where it is. Such 
have no eye of faith to pierce the reality of things. But 
he with opened eye is seeking for a better country, that is a 
heavenly. It is not the extent of his dissatisfaction with 
the world, or the strength of his resolution, or the force 
of circumstances, or a peculiar nature which leads him on 
in his chosen course, but the conviction that there is a 
better country to which he can attain. And it is better 
not simply because it promises a greater amount of good, 
or more lasting good such as the earth gives for a few 
years, but because it lays before his hopes another kind of 
good, as different from earthly as possible. This differ- 
ence between spiritual and temporal good was always a 
reality of infinite importance, but he could not perceive it 
until his eye was opened and his affections transferred. 
Since that great revolution in his character, weak and 
tempted and often vacillating as he has been, he has 
resisted the invitations of the world to return to his old 
plan of life, because his desires are fastened on a new- 
object, on the heavenly inheritance, which comprises all 
that is holy and truly blessed. 

III. Owing to these heavenly desires, to this spiritual 
mind of the Christian, God is not ashamed to be called his 
God. As his God and protector, God takes care of his 
interests by preparing for him a city. 

The aspirations of the heavenly mind point towards 
God, and do homage to God not only as a lawgiver and 
controller, but as a hope and portion. Now will God be 
ashamed of such a heart, that breathes towards Him the 
new language of love and confidence? Will He reject 
from His service one who desires to be with Him and to 
work for Him ? Will He make no difference between the 
condition of those who have clung to this world in spite of 
all divine influence, all warnings, all demonstrations of the 



358 Longings for the Heavenly City. 

emptiness of their hope, and those who have forsaken the 
world to find Him ? If He had made these no promise, 
could He forbear to show them His complacency in their 
choice ; and if he has made them promises great and pre- 
cious, will He fail in the performance? They throw them- 
selves, by an act of faith, on Him, take Him as their God, 
resolve to cleave to Him, prize heaven because He is 
there, and turn away from the earth because they cannot 
see enough of Him here : will He not value such faith, 
such longing after Him, such surrendry of their happi- 
ness into His hands? Assuredly He will. He is far 
from being ashamed of such service, far from disappointing 
such hopes, far from showing to the universe, that such 
consecration is of no account before Him, when, moreover, 
His own Spirit inspired it. Therefore He enters into cov- 
enant with them : since they make Him, by an act of faith, 
their God, that is their object of supreme veneration, their 
hope, their guide, He becomes their God, that is, their pro- 
tector — in which protection is included all necessary guid- 
ance by His Spirit and Providence here, together with the 
hopes of immortal life. TJiey are not ashamed before the 
world to make Him their God ; He is not ashamed to be 
called their God. 

Acting as their God — the sacred writer proceeds to say 
— He hath prepared for them a city. His preparations are 
as large as their hopes. His foresight has, from the foun- 
dation of the world, arranged all things, so that whatever 
changes overturn this world, there is an unchangeable 
share in immortal life prepared for them. Others cannot 
step in and take their inheritance. It is theirs by prepa- 
ration, by the predetermination of God. 

It is not without emphasis, that this portion prepared 
for them is called a city. We have already, in brief, 
summed up the notions that can lie in this word. Let us 
now again give to it a moment's meditation. 

It is a city which is prepared for them in contrast with a 



Longings for the Heavenly City. 359 

tent; it is something abiding and stationary, in contrast with 
this temporary and uncertain state of existence. The 
dwellers in tents, as they drove their flocks from place to 
place, beheld at a distance, perched on a hill-top, the cities 
which the industrious Canaanites had built. While they 
were fastened to no one spot, the city dwellers lived within 
their walls year after year; one generation of nomads 
passed away after another, and still the city was there, 
shining at a distance in the sun, with houses built to defy 
time, whose walls were never taken down to be transported 
to some other spot. The city became to the owners of 
flocks an emblem of what was lasting : the tent became to 
the citizens an emblem of what was short-lived and tran- 
sient. 

The man of God dwells in a tent or tabernacle iu this 
world, and not only wants no city here, but feels that he 
can find none. Still his nature longs for something 
abiding. Death, decay, change, uncertainty are alien 
from his nature, they run counter to the longing for im- 
mortality which is within him. Such an abiding-place 
God, his God, hath provided for him. It is a city which 
hath foundations, whose builder is the everlasting one, and 
which the skill of such a builder has made indestructible. 
It is a permanent home. No more does he who is ad- 
mitted into its gates need to be moved about in quest of a 
new settlement. He is no more an emigrant or a pilgrim; 
he is no more left to uncertain conjectures in regard to his 
future condition. This city henceforth is to be his con- 
tinual home, and his rest. 

Again it is a city which is prepared for the godly man, 
in distinction from a lonely tent among strangers. So that 
his feeling of being by himself away from his best friends 
will have an end. As the traveler in the East passes from 
the bazaars and thronged streets of some capital, to the 
border of the wilderness, where the Bedouin is encamped 
for a season, he finds a new sort of people, who have no 



360 Longings for the Heavenly City. 

turn for city life, who are retired from the haunts of men, 
and when nearest to cities feel wholly estranged from 
them. Something so do godly men feel amid all the ties 
and joys of this world. Its spirit is unlike theirs ; they 
have no home-feeling in its neighborhood ; they have, 
while they live closest to it, an unsatisfied sense of ab- 
sence from something most akin to them, a sense of empti- 
ness for which hope alone furnishes a relief. The city 
which God, their God, hath prepared for them fills up 
this want. There they are to be among friends, in whom 
they can fully confide, — with God, Christ and the re- 
deemed, — there they will no more have that sense of 
loneliness, which saddened them in their night-wanderings 
through this world. The city is the great gathering place 
of God's chosen ones, where nothing that hates or de- 
stroys can enter. 

Again the place which God, their God, hath prepared 
for them, is called a city, as being the heavenly polity 
where God reigns. If the Bedouin or Tartar be carried 
from his wild usages, to the rules and institutions of a 
well-ordered commonwealth, he finds at once the entire 
contrast with his old way of life. He cannot adapt him- 
self to the healthy control and method of a society so 
wholly unlike his own spirit of license. 

It is quite otherwise with the Christian. In this world, 
as he wanders through it, lie sees disorder, lawlessness, un- 
bridled will : God reigns by natural law, but not over 
human hearts or society. And thus whatever institutions 
arise on earth, they tend to acquire a godless character 
and to decay. But this city, which God, his God, hath 
prepared for him, is a commonwealth of well-ordered, 
sanctified minds, of citizens whose highest idea of freedom 
is to serve and love with the entire devotion of the heart. 
It is a place where the rights of God as a sovereign are 
acknowledged with joy. It is a city, where no citizen 
violates the rights of another, where there can be no con- 



Longings for the Heavenly City. 361 

flict of interests, no faction, no revolution, nor any fear, 
penalty or restraint. It is a place of perfect harmony, a 
perfect commonwealth. 

The reflections to which I have called your attention in 
this discourse enable us to discover that heavenly long- 
ings and the feeling of the pilgrim can be ascribed to no 
earthly origin. 

There are those who think that what is divine in man, 
as they call it, if unimpeded by counteracting causes and 
refined by education, would blossom out into an unworldly, 
heavenly character. There is something in man which 
discerns dimly or feels its celestial origin, and can be made 
by the proper encouragement to trample the world under 
its feet. The aspirations after ideal perfection, which we 
considered in the early part of this discourse, can be made 
without any help from God or revelation to fasten specifi- 
cally upon heavenly things, and either to put on the na- 
ture of what is called faith in the Bible, or to take its 
place. 

This view of the capabilities of human nature is false, 
but akin to truth. A great poet has said that " Heaven 
lies about us in our infancy," while " shades of the prison- 
house begin to close upon the growing boy.' , 
" The youth," 

he continues, 

" Who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is nature's priest, 

And hy the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended ; 

At length the man perceives it die away, 

And fade into the light of common day." 

Now I believe and most cheerfully admit that if human 
nature had retained its incorrupt state of child-like faith, 
if the stream of gratitude and veneration had not almost 
dried up in the bosom of man, if he had lived in sympathy 
with whatever is pure, — I admit that in this case, as the 
faculties expanded, the recognition of a pure and infinite 
God would have been received into the mind even without 



362 Longings for the Heavenly City. 

distinct proof, that with a feeling of his true destiny man 
would have embraced a faith in immortal life, and that 
heaven would have lain about us in childhood and in 
manhood, like a sky into whose blue depths our eye could 
penetrate. But from the wreck of this happy innocence 
what has survived save longings that either gnaw the soul 
or content themselves with an earthly object? What is 
there in the heaven or future life of any heathen mythology 
that indicates this child-like purity of the race, or that acts 
as a strong motive upon the man environed with earthly 
things? Homer knew what men are, when he made 
Achilles among the shades say that he would rather be a 
field laborer in the service of a poor man, than be king 
over the dead. No! my friends, there is enough of relation- 
ship to heaven left, since our fall from innocence, to make 
us without excuse when from love to this world we turn 
our backs on celestial hopes, but not enough to exalt us 
above that world-worship in which we are sunk, and which 
is the very kernel of our sin. If we had affinities to a 
heaven where God manifests His presence, we should on 
the first news of it receive it as a message of life, but 
worldliness is as intense, there is as little love for a spiritual 
and heavenly inheritance among the money-loving and 
earth-loving inhabitants of Christian lands, as among the 
most besotted idolaters. There is need then of a new reve- 
lation, that the dark mind may have a light brought into 
it in spite of itself, and of a new creation, that a love for 
spiritual things may be awakened. Thus only can the 
soul be led to lift its aspirations towards a heaven of un- 
spotted holiness, bright with God's presence ; thus only will 
it believe and trust in the sure promise of God, and over- 
come earthly allurements. It is not enough that there be 
a revival of a child's mind in the midst of manhood, — 
although even that amid the world's resisting forces were 
impossible — but there must also be a deadening of the old 
worldly by the power of a new heavenly principle. Not 



Longings for the Heavenly City. 363 

without this can we receive the promises as motive powers 
into our hearts, nor be persuaded by them, nor embrace 
them, nor confess that we are strangers and pilgrims on 
earth. Without this remoulding of his nature, the most 
aspiring, the most ideal will form for himself an earthly 
paradise ; with this the Christian of the coarsest mould will 
put on by degrees heavenly properties, and become trans- 
figured into an inhabitant of the city of God. 



SERMON XXV. 

THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE.* 

Matthew xxiv. 4. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached 
in all the world for a witness to all nations, and then shall the end 
come. 

It is the doctrine of the New Testament that the dis- 
pensation which was introduced by Christ is to continue 
until the end of the world. The whole strain of the New 
Testament shows this ; and such passages especially as 
"Of His kingdom there shall be no end;" "He must 
reign until He hath put all His enemies under His feet ;" 
" This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the 
world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the 
end come," are proofs, with many others like them, that 
the Founder of Christianity and His disciples regarded it 
as the final act of God's moral system for the human 
race. The very nature of Christ's religion would be 
enough of itself to demonstrate that it must be, if true, 
not a stage in a progress, but the ultimate form of reli- 
gious truth and thought, the last of God's economies, the 
fruit which, when fully ripe, is followed by the plant's 
death and the end of the year. As the completion of 
whatever was imperfect in Judaism, as intended for all 
mankind, and claiming for itself to satisfy the religious 
wants of all, it cannot be superseded by any new form of 
truth, or supplemented by a later and improved revela- 
tion. All the progress of mankind until the end of time, 
and all the hopes of mankind are treasured up in it, if 

* This was originally preached in the College Chapel with omis- 
sions, and was afterwards enlarged and published in the New Englander 
for July, 1869. 

364 



The Religion of the Future. 365 

Its claims are just When it shall have done its work, 
the present condition of man on earth shall come to an 
end, and a state of things wholly new, a state of retribu- 
tion, shall succeed. 

There are many persons in the present age who refuse 
to admit these pretensions of Christianity. It is not to be 
the universal, nor the ultimate religion of the wcrld. In 
some respects it may have been a very great improvement 
on whatever of religious doctrine preceded it, and it has 
carried the nations of Christendom to a higher state of 
culture than was ever before reached ; but it is like all 
other religions in having no historical basis and no divine 
authority. The progress of the world, hereafter, will con- 
sist in setting aside the exclusive claims of Christ, in 
retaining all that in His moral precepts which will endure 
the storms of time, and in giving the guidance of the 
future to science and human insight. The religion of the 
future will be a religion with all that is peculiar to Chris- 
tianity cast away, while something of its spirit will be 
retained ; and, with the help of this spirit, without a reve- 
lation, the coming ages will reach the point of perfection 
that is attainable by man. 

The enemies of Christianity are divided among them- 
selves. As Atheists, Pantheists, and Theists — the latter 
of various classes — they even oppose and sometimes 
denounce one another. Of this irreconcilable difference 
of opinion, however, we intend to make no use. We will 
suppose that the Theists are at length to triumph ; — that 
they who receive the doctrine of an infinite God, and 
a divine plan in governing the world, and who hold 
to a system of morals something like that of Christ, 
are to gain the day over all other thinkers ; — that the 
destinies of the world are to be put into their hands ; — 
that the religion of the future is to be as they shall shape 
it. Their way of thinking, wo will suppose, has had its 
perfect work. The reign of Christianity is over. That 



366 The Religion of the Future. 

religion which soothed sorrows and inspired hope, which 
took up man amid the despair of decaying antiquity, was 
his only protector through the middle ages, and led on 
modern civilization ; which has encouraged philosophy to 
reproduce the thoughts of God ; which has given security 
to states by its lofty morals, and exalts the poorest of men 
by awakening the feeling of human brotherhood and the 
sense of human rights; which has controlled and modified 
art and letters, — that religion, we say, is fallen, its strong- 
hold of facts is demolished, its miracles, whether to be 
explained historically or not, are discarded as inconsistent 
with the laws of the universe ; its Christ is only a man, its 
God has retired behind the curtain, never to reveal Him- 
self in human affairs. He spoke not to the fathers by 
the prophets. He speaks not to us by His Son. He will 
never speak to mankind. Men must do the best they can 
without Christ and without a Gospel. 

Let us make the most favorable supposition the case 
admits of — that these foes of Christ's religion are sincere, 
earnest, philanthropic men, haters of all injustice and of 
all falsehood ; that they begin their work of destruction 
with the purpose of introducing something better, and 
really believe that the progress of men can only be 
reached through their systems of thinking. Let us sap- 
pose too, that unbelief creeps over the Christian world 
not all at once, like a stroke of paralysis, but by a slow 
undermining of the foundations, by an abandonment of 
one point after another. The Christian faith ceases not 
at once to be respected or admired, but becomes by 
degrees conscious of its weakness, loses hope, retreats 
from the more educated to the less, lingers longest with 
the poor, the widow, the afflicted who have no weight in 
the world, and at length dies out and is forgotten, to be 
counted among the many religions, which she herself 
drove away from among mankind. 

Now, we ask, What the world will do without a positive, 



The Religion of the Future, 367 

historical, revealed religion. Let the religion of the 
future, as we will call the rival of Christianity, start on 
its career with all veneration for the spirit of the Gospel ; 
can that veneration last? What doctrines will be left to 
rear their heads above the deluge of unbelief? What 
motives in favor of religion will survive the decay, the 
extinction of Christianity? 

We propose to attempt to answer some of these ques- 
tions in a spirit of candor, to look at some of the dis- 
advantages, which, will of necessity, attend on such a 
religion, and to consider what prospects it can have of 
spreading over and of bettering mankind. 

And here let it be permitted to us to say once for all, 
that we compare the resources and powers of the Gospel 
with systems of Theism, but that, if what we are about to 
urge, has any weight, it will be still more weighty in the 
comparison between Christianity and Pantheistic religions. 
The point again toward which we turn our remarks, is 
not directly the truth of the religions placed side by 
side, nor directly their services to mankind, but rather to 
find out whether any religion, which lays no claim to be a 
revelation, even although holding fast to a personal God, 
can fulfill the offices of a religion for the world, and 
whether, if it cannot, progress or civilization can take its 
place. 

I. Our first position is that the absence from a religion 
of historical facts is a very great weakness, or, in other 
words, that the supposed religion of the future, being 
unable, as it must be, to take the form of facts and of 
history, must be without a very great source of power. 

Christianity is historical in its very nature, and cannot, 
as we maintain, be torn apart from history, without both 
ruining the religion and belittling the whole story of the 
world; for the system of redemption through Christ is a 
progressive work goiDg on in the world of men, and cul- 
minating in the manifestation here below of the Son of 



363 The Religion of the Future. 

God. The religion being a story, and a story concerning 
God, its evidences, it is quite natural to suppose, must not 
merely make an appeal to the moral judgments and sen- 
timents, but, like all other story, must depend on the 
veracity of witnesses, on the truth of facts in the outer 
world. Moreover, as religion is a practical thing, as its 
highest aim ever must be to be taken up into the lives of 
men, and hence to interweave itself with all actions and 
all history, it must exhibit life, or truth, conviction, and 
principle in action, before our eyes — that is, it must be 
historical. 

All this, the great founder of Christianity and His first 
followers were aware of, more so, perhaps, than any of 
their successors in the following ages until the present 
time. He sent them forth as witnesses ; they took this 
attitude before the world and felt that this was their lead- 
ing vocation. Their view of the strength of the Gospel 
was justified by their success. It spread by the simple 
telling of a story, even among the most prejudiced, among 
the Jews to whom a suffering Christ was a stumbling- 
block, and among the Greeks, to whom a new religion, 
bursting in upon the events of the present world, was a 
thing not so much as dreamed of. It is true that it con- 
tained a system of doctrines, a philosophy suited to man's 
wants, to his convictions, to his deepest nature, but it is 
equally true, that the philosophy could not have existed 
separate from the facts and that by the facts it was 
recommended, impressed, and established. 

To this force of the historical element in religion the 
systems of heathenism bear testimony. 

On whatever principle we account for the religions of 
nature, it is evident that their mythologies and their wor- 
ship indicate a desire to bring the Deity out of the region 
of abstract thought, to represent Him to the human senses 
and in contiguity with man, to call Him within the limits 
of space and time. The great interest, the great charm of 



The Religion of the Future. 369 

heathenism consists in its mythology, as India, Greece, 
Scandinavia, and even the new world bear witness : if its 
views of the Divine Being had not taken the form of a 
narrative, if the gods had not been represented as living 
and moving and acting among men, it would have lacked 
the power to fascinate and in a measure to satisfy the hu- 
man soul. The Romans, who had at first a sober religion 
without image worship and with a scanty mythology, to a 
good degree deserted their earlier and vaguer system for 
the more beautiful, more copious, more imaginative fables 
of the Greeks. Upon mythology worship in a considera- 
ble degree depends ; the sacredness of particular spots, the 
reasons for particular rites, the character of the rites them- 
selves, are all to be referred to ancient and venerated tra- 
ditions. Poetry too and art are shaped by mythology; 
they draw their materials from its fables, they act origi- 
nally as its handmaids. And, when heathenism decays, 
as decay it must, the overthrow grows out of philosophical 
views and historical criticism rejecting the narratives 
handed down from ancient times. All these and many 
like considerations show that religion would appear dead 
and barren to mankind if it assumed an abstract, philo- 
sophical form, that it would not come home to the soul, or 
have a sway over the life. 

Even the decay of heathenism in the Roman empire, 
that strange time when the old religion tried to brace 
itself up against the spread of doubt and of Christianity, 
indicates a longing for the appearance again of the Deity 
amid human events: the magic rites, the mysteries, the 
theurgic processes by which men sought to come into com- 
munication with the spiritual world, were, as it seems to 
us, so many testimonies of human nature that the Gospel, 
by means of its narrative form, and the economy of our re- 
ligion from the first by its history, are most wisely accom- 
modated to human nature and human wants ; so that they 



370 The Religion of the Future. 

who expect much from a religion of mere abstractions 
must be most signally disappointed. 

And this experience of mankind under heathenism and 
Christianity makes it probable that the nature of man 
itself, rather than anything so variable as the style of cul- 
ture and of knowledge, pronounces an historical form to be 
necessary for the sway of religious ideas among mankind. 
This is made more than probable by several considera- 
tions. Our nature, except when under strict philosophical 
training, of which few are capable and from which many 
turn away in disgust, revolts from abstractions and de- 
lights in concrete realities. We are made to take plea- 
sure in personal existences and in their actions. Our sen- 
timents need some object on which they can fasten. Rever- 
ence is not content with existing as a vague feeling, but 
seeks for some reality which may be the object of worship. 
The feeling of dependence needs to have that on which we 
are dimly conscious of depending body itself forth in some 
apprehensible form. Thankfulness implies the purpose of 
a known personal object to confer a benefit, and so all our 
feelings go forth only towards distinctly apprehended per- 
sonalities. But personalities evidence and manifest them- 
selves through actions which have to do with life and the 
world. So also the imagination is distressed — so to speak 
— if it cannot give form to the invisible and the ideal. 
The Christian religion could not hold its ground in the 
world but through a personal attachment to Christ. How 
then can a religion, with no attraction derived from his- 
tory and personal power, expect to be met by human sym- 
pathy and to spread through mankind? 

But, again, a religion which has no history must be des- 
titute of the power of life and example. 

Life, considered in relation to religion, is the embodi- 
ment and test of doctrine or principle. Example is an 
illustration or acting out of principle in a particular case, 
and implies an influence on the imitative nature of man. 



The Religion of the Future. 371 

Nothing gives so much power or weakness to a man as his 
life. Nothing tests a religion so much as the way in which 
it moulds the life of men. The life of Christ is the central 
power in Christianity. The treasury of the Church is the 
good lives of all faithful Christians, not because they can 
do more than they ought, as the Komanists supposed, but 
because they act just as they should. The blood of the 
martyrs is the seed of the Church, not so much because 
they dared to die for what they prized, as because there 
lay behind the martyr's faith a life that rose above the or- 
dinary level. If Christianity had not put on a liviDg 
form, if it could not have passed at once from high and 
loving precepts into the shape of pure men and women, we 
should not be defending it now. Forgiveness might have 
sounded sweet in precept, but if Christ and His dying dis- 
ciple, Stephen, had not forgiven, where would the hu- 
manity of the world have been at this time? 

It seems certain, then, that the strength of Christianity, 
as of Judaism before it, lay in its history, in the lives 
which it formed, and especially in that one life which it 
set up as a perfect model. But for facts in the life of 
Jesus, the cloud of witnesses would not have surrounded 
us, the host of shining ones would not have arisen in our 
sky. Mere precept, although invested with celestial au- 
thority, can effect little ; an abstract standard of character, 
not realized in the life, will be almost destitute of power 
for the great mass of mankind. 

But the man whose religion, as he thinks, is to control 
the future, may ask whether it cannot become the " heir of 
all the ages ;" whether all that has been good and pure in 
the lives of men, under the Gospel and under heathenism, 
cannot be collected and used for the good of mankind? 
Why may not Christ, with His saints, stand on the cal- 
endar of that religion, even as the heathen emperor, Alex- 
ander Scverus, built a temple to Christ, and counted Him 
among his gods? Meanwhile, he will say, the religion 



372 The Religion of the Future. 

itself will be forming its own examples of a higher than 
Christian virtue, and setting them up for the veneration of 
all future time. 

What success this proposed religion may have in the 
way of making godly and finished lives we do not propose 
now to consider. But this is certain, that a great part of 
the glory of Christian lives must then be effaced and lost. 
For Christ will have become a self-deceiver, and the 
view of His own character under which He acted was false. 
You cannot separate His consciousness of a peculiar rela- 
tion to God from His life itself, and you cannot separate 
the life of His followers from a faith in Him as divine, 
and from the power of those truths which He taught, and 
which, on the supposition, have turned out to be false, or 
to be without divine authority. Either, then, veneration 
and respect for the character of Christ and of the best 
Christians will, in a good degree, cease, or it will be ac- 
counted a thing of small importance, whether that be true 
or false which controls the life, since falsehood has at- 
tended the development of the noblest characters known 
to the world. 

II. The supposed new religion of the future must be a 
religion without authority, a religion constructed by hu- 
man reason alone. The Christian religion claims a two- 
fold divine authority ; it is from God and by God, — it is a 
revelation contained in inspired writings. Even if you 
gave up the latter source of authority, you would not cut 
all its connection with heaven, unless the claim to inspira- 
tion be part and parcel of the revelation itself. Nor is the 
Christian religion solitary in advancing such claims, but 
all over the world, wherever religions have sprung up, 
they have declared themselves to be disclosures of the Di- 
vine will. Nor is it important for our argument to decide 
whether these religions have been the product of impos- 
ture, or of the myth-making power, or of a self-deluding 
enthusiasm. If impostures, they confess a need of some 



The Religion of the Future. 373 

authority beyond their inventors. If the offspring of a 
myth-making age, they clothe themselves in the garb of a 
revelation from an instinctive sense that religion ought to 
wear such a dress. If they grow up in an individual mind 
of large imaginative power, the same craving for a con- 
nection with God and for an inspiration from Him is man- 
ifest. 

It is further evident that the reception of religion in the 
world has much depended upon faith in its divine origin. 
That Christ was a teacher come from God was an essen- 
tial element of His power, without which many would 
have refused to listen to His words, and few, if any, 
would have followed Him. The churches founded by the 
apostles were founded on faith in a divine interruption of 
the natural order of things. And so the written word is 
indebted for no small part of its power, for the attention 
originally given to it in spite of its defects of composition, 
for the hold it has had on the best minds of the world, to 
a belief that it is in some way authorized to give the news 
of a plan of God, which man's own faculties could not 
discover, that it contains facts and truths above nature 
and above the reach of reason. And hence, if at any time 
the evidences for the Christian Scriptures lose their hold 
on the faith of any age, the religion itself is abandoned. 
We are then thrown back upon reason ; we must decide 
between different schools of philosophy, or follow our 
inward light, or be tossed on the uncertain waters of 
skepticism. And the need of divine authority for the 
guidance of our faith and conduct is felt by many of the 
strongest minds to be so great, that it is only with ex- 
treme reluctance, and by a kind of necessity which is 
harrowing to the soul, that they blow out the light that 
was their guide and commit themselves to the direction of 
reason. They feel when they reject the Gospel that some 
authorized guide, some standard of truth, some charter, 



374 The Religion of the Future. 

speaking pardon and spiritual hope, would be unspeak- 
ably precious. 

The contrast between Christianity, as authorized to 
make God known to men — not indeed shedding full light 
on every side, but satisfying and stimulating without 
suppressing reason, — and a religion of man's devising, is 
one that reaches to the very foundation of the soul's life. 
Religion in the soul would shrink into pitiably small 
dimensions without the guidance and authority of a super- 
natural revelation. What is to become of faith in spiritual 
realities, in what God thinks of conduct, in what He is 
and how He will treat men, if the Scriptures are of 
" private interpretation," if Christ spoke without authority, 
if no one hath come down from heaven to tell the world 
of heavenly things ? What will trust find to lean upon, 
if the " great and precious promises " are of human origin ? 
Where will repentance go for refuge, if there is no assur- 
ance of pardon? How will the soul be made strong 
enough to resist sin, if there is no certainty of divine 
assistance? How can such a hope of heaven as reason 
can establish fortify the erring against earthly trials, and 
help them to die in peace? In short, since every religious 
feeling, every virtue, all morality, all practical benevo- 
lence are now maintained, as Christian experience demon- 
strates, by the voice of God in His word, will there not 
be an end of all these things, and must not religion be- 
come so uncertain, so weak, when Christ shall be given 
up, as to have next to no power over human life and 
society? Without divine authority, evidence and motive 
power are taken away from religion, and without these 
what can it do for the good of man? Nay, without 
assurance concerning those great questions that perplex 
unaided reason, will not the main energy of human 
thought be turned towards the problems of philosophy 
and away from practical virtue ? Can a religion drawn 
up out of man's own soul satisfy his reason ? Will there 



The Religion of the Future. 375 

not be eternal questionings, as there were among the old 
philosophers ? Will not the main strength of the greatest 
minds be spent in finding out truth, instead of reducing it 
to practice and using it for human improvement? At 
present to a very great extent Christianity satisfies the 
cravings of the soul by its truth and by its evidence. 
What can any other religion which claims no such 
authority bring into the world save doubt, restlessness, 
self-dissatisfaction, and wandering, unsuccessful efforts after 
rest? 

To make the immense importance of divine authority 
more apparent, let us briefly sketch the progress of sub- 
jective religion, as we find it arising and increasing under 
the Gospel. In the first instance there is a recognition, 
founded on positive precepts, of a divine law reaching to 
the thoughts and intents of the heart. This the moral 
sense approves and adopts as its rule; but what would 
become of the standard of action, if the outward au- 
thority were to be disregarded and denied ? Is it not 
certain that the divine requirement, as things are, origi- 
nates and sustains all the convictions of the necessity of a 
religious life, and awakens a sense of want and a sense of 
sin by which the soul is led to God ? Then again in the 
pathway of our return to God, we are met by positive as- 
surances of danger on the one hand, and positive offers of 
forgiveness on the other, without which it is certain that 
religion on the Christian plan could not begin to exist. 
And the terms of forgiveness, contained in these revela- 
tions which the Gospel makes, are the outward resting- 
place on which the peace of the soul through a long life 
reposes. What assurance can it find within itself, or in 
the plan of the world large enough to fill the place of this 
authority? Then the whole of internal religion is ob- 
viously maintained by declarations of Scripture, some of 
which, singly, have afforded more comfort than all the 
reasonings and self-encouragements of unaided minds 



376 The Religion of the Future. 

since the world began. A life of inward morality and of 
holiness is built on the Scriptural exhibition of God and 
His holiness. A life of benevolence is a following of the 
precepts, and of the lives which are precepts, that the 
Scriptures afford us. A life of hope needs distinct state- 
ments, and these must embrace both worlds. A life of 
unworldliness and self-renunciation needs promises to sup- 
port it in its weakness, lest it should have given up every- 
thing to gain nothing. And so whatever aspect religion 
presents to us in the soul, whether it consists in escaping 
from sin, or in reconciliation of heart to God, or in acts 
of morality or of philanthropy or of piety, or in the 
development of certain feelings, or in the formation of a 
certain character, it needs throughout and actually uses 
the support of the Scriptures, as the guide of faith, the 
directory of life, the strength of every feeling of the heart. 
What then must happen when this revealed word shall 
have been abandoned, when its former influence shaL 
have ceased, when its light shall have faded away from 
the world's atmosphere, but that religion must lose its 
hold on the world, must dwindle down into a feeble, 
sickly, timorous thing, looking every way for help, if it 
do not quite expire ? 

But it will be said by a portion of those who hope to 
see a new universal religion rise up on the ruins of Chris- 
tianity, that their faith is in a certain sense from God and 
is attended with authority from Him. Every good man, 
every man who walks according to the inward light is in 
a sense an inspired man. Christ had with Him more 
truth than any other human being, because He was better 
than any. Thus there is a kind of natural inspiration of 
the human race, which is slowly perfecting truth, eliminat- 
ing errors, bringing man from the outward and historical, 
from the claims to divine authority — proved now to be 
unreliable and yet for a long time serving as stepping- 



The Religion of the Future. 377 

stones in human progress — to the pure ultimately re- 
cognized inner light of the soul. 

There is much of beauty and attractiveness in such a 
theory as this, but it cannot stand the test of truth and 
sound philosophy. It takes no account of the weakness 
of human reason, as demonstrated by the history of 
opinions, — of the vain efforts, for instance, made by the 
Greek philosophers to attain to theological truth, and of 
their hopeless diversity of views ending in skepticism. It 
takes no account of the subsequent history of philosophi- 
cal thought, which has failed down to the present time, 
notwithstanding all the efforts of highly gifted minds in 
the idealistic and pantheistic schools, to reach any assur- 
ance in regard to any doctrine of religion. It takes no 
account of the diversities of opinion into which men of 
insight have been or may be led, either from confounding 
their insight and the conclusions of their understandings, 
or because insight itself, at least in the present condition 
of human nature, is an unsafe guide. It demands that a 
man should be good in order to have a true insight, but 
how is he to be good except by truth which insight dis- 
covers, and how is he to be followed by those who have 
no such clear insight as his ? Would Christ have been a 
lawgiver and an example for mankind if He had spoken 
out His own private feelings without any claim to divine 
authority ? The theory then will at length discover that 
it is decking itself in the robes of Christianity, that its il- 
lumination and insight are really borrowed from the 
Gospel, that whenever it shall succeed so far as to destroy 
faith in a historic revelation, at once darkness and distrust 
will begin to creep again over the minds of men whom 
Christianity had somewhat enlightened. 

This theory, moreover, discloses its own inconsistency 
and falsehood by the position which it takes in regard to 
Christ. The wisest, best, humblest, and most unselfish of 
men, as is conceded, He made the most stupendous mistake 



378 The Religion of the Future. 

in regard to Himself, and brought it about that this mis- 
take became engrafted on His religion, nay — that it gave to 
His religion its distinctive character and its power in the 
world. So much light with so much darkness, such lofty- 
purity united to such false claims of exaltation above the 
measure of a human being — this was the wisdom and ex- 
cellence, this the insight of Jesus Christ. If He had insight 
and nothing more, is not His insight wholly unreliable, 
siuce He failed to see into Himself? 

III. The supposed religion of the future will of necessity 
have a very limited range of doctrines. 

Religious doctrine is the measure and sum total of the 
motives which a religion can bring to bear upon charac- 
ter. If the doctrines are false or immoral, they will form 
perverted or defective characters ; if scanty, they will have 
little effect on character ; if merely metaphysical and not 
ethical, they will have no effect on character whatever. 
It has been claimed by the friends of Christianity that it 
is intensely practical, that its grand truths or doctrines, 
especially those which are connected with its grand facts 
or history, have a direct and most healthy bearing on hu- 
man life, that it contains enough of truth to finish human 
character on all its sides, and that, when believed, it ac- 
tually forms characters of the highest excellence. The 
question then is how much of loss of power over human 
nature will arise from a rejection of the most important 
and distinctive doctrines of Christianity ; by the side of 
which question stand others already answered, How much 
power will be lost by losing the vital force of a historical 
religion, and how much will be lost by losing the authori- 
ty of revelation, and throwing men back upon the results 
of human speculation ? 

It is impossible at this time to predict what shape the 
doctrines of the new religion of the future will ultimately 
take. But thus much we can say, that if it should start 
with a certain apparatus of doctrines, part of them will at 



The Religion of the Future. 379 

length be broken or not used at all, and that owing to the 
influence of Christian education, which its advocates can- 
not now escape, its motive power and seeming excellence 
will be greatest at first, and will be growing less and less 
afterward. 

But let us try to form a candid estimate, as far as pro- 
babilities will allow, of the amount of truth and motive 
that will be within the reach of this religion of the future, 
and that can be used in endeavoring to give finish to 
moral and religious character. 

First, whatever is especially Christian, as distinguished 
from natural religion and from the conclusions of human 
reason, must be given up. The doctrine that the Word 
became flesh, that God sent His Son to redeem men from 
sin, will be looked upon as a fable, as an unaccountable 
claim on the part of Jesus or an unauthorized addition to 
His teachings. Thus, His relations to God and to man 
being put on a wholly different basis, He ceases to be a 
great personage governing the world's history, and sinks 
into a teacher who mistook His own nature most fearfully, 
and from whose most authentic doctrines very much must 
be lopped off. That this alone would make a revolution 
in the world, greater than any since the birth of Christ 
Himself, cannot be questioned. Oh ! what other throne, 
what dynasty of high-born kings reaching through ages 
and famed through the world, could fall, which man might 
not forget in a century ! But this kingdom over hearts, 
this invisible sway of Christ beginning in the self-conse- 
cration of the soul and ending in the entire renovation of 
society and of government, — when can it cease to be re- 
gretted? Oh! what lapse of time, what changes in outer 
things will prevent the world from bleeding at every pore 
through a feeling that it has lost its guide and the pledge 
of its stability ! 

Secondly, the doctrine concerning God and His provi- 
dence must be reduced to its lowest dimensions. AVhether 



380 The Religion of the Future. 

the reigning form of this new religion will cling firmly to 
the personality of God, as a cardinal point, and drive 
Pantheists as a heretical sect beyond its pale, cannot be 
distinctly anticipated. But suppose its standard doctrine 
to be that human nature within itself, apart from proof, 
contains a recognition of a Deity; when we come to the 
doctrine of providence and of spiritual influence, the 
ground is more uncertain. To a Providence, in any such 
sense that any interruptions of the common course of 
physical law can be admitted, it cannot subscribe, for it 
rejects all the miracles of the past. And thus it can 
scarcely teach, with any show of consistency, that prayer 
can in any way affect the order of things, or be an argu- 
ment with God for bestowing blessings on the worshipers. 

Moreover, without a positive revelation, that speaks of 
a God near at hand and around His creatures, it is in- 
creasingly hard to put faith in that high doctrine, for 
every advance of science thrusts Him to a remoter dis- 
tance. He has left the reins on the neck of time, and 
inhabits His eternity as a vital energy, without concern or 
pity for man. What check can the religion of the future 
apply to this tendency to shut God out of the visible and 
actual present? Must it not succumb to the relentless 
blows of science, and lose its faith in a hand guiding the 
world, since positive and natural religion together find it 
so hard to furnish strong enough antidotes against skepti- 
cism? 

The doctrine of spiritual influence, for aught that we 
can see, it may with consistency admit. But who can tell 
whether such influences can be hoped for, since they pro- 
ceed from the free will of a sovereign, who has made no 
promises either in an external revelation or to the soul? 
May they be prayed for ? What encouragement is there 
even to begin to pray, much more to persevere in it, when 
everything is so uncertain? May it not be the appointed 
lot of man to struggle alone against internal evils, as he 



The Religion of the Future. 381 

must by the law of his nature against outward? In this 
state of uncertainty there will not be much prayer, and 
without Divine help the hope of improving the character 
will decline. Does not this single consideration show that 
a great part of practical religion will be cut up by the 
roots ? 

Thirdly, the doctrine concerning man which Christianity 
has taught us will need great modification. If the Gospel's 
view of sin could be retained without its remedial provis- 
ions, if a sense of guilt, with no assurance of forgiveness, 
could settle upon souls under the new religion as now, 
mankind would cry out against it in desperation, they 
would flee away from leaden clouds of death which let no 
rays of hope through, or would wander, if not desperate, 
into all kinds of heathenish ways of propitiating God. Will 
it be said, that the glimpses which we catch without reve- 
lation of the Divine clemency and forbearance would be 
enough of an assurance for sinning men? We answer, 
that they might satisfy a weak sense of sin, but could not 
comfort a deep one. The sense of sin, then, as of a mal- 
ady at the root of our nature for which each one of us is re- 
sponsible, might very much fade away. God never having, 
by any revelation from heaven, disclosed His wrath against 
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, what sufficient 
evidence would there be that sin is a very great evil, how 
would it be seen to alienate the soul from Him, what 
reason would there be to dread His frown? Nor is it un- 
likely that sin would be regarded as a transitional state in 
the necessary progress of human nature. And it seems 
likely, that the efforts against it would be confined princi- 
pally to the rectification of society, to the removal of ig- 
norance, to the relief of the lower classes, on the ground 
that human nature is not bad, that evil emanates from so- 
ciety and can be effectually obstructed and dried up by 
outward reformations. However this may be, it is certain 
that by some anaesthetic process, what we call a sense of 



382 The Religion of the Future. 

sin, would be benumbed. But is it not evident, that the 
cost of this would be immense? Must there not ensue a 
weakening of the very foundations of morality? Could 
the family, could society endure this? Will the religion 
of the future be able to endure it? Will not faith in God, 
and faith in unalterable morality, in holiness and justice, 
stand or fall together with faith in sin? Must there not 
then be a further plunge of a demoralized world into 
Atheism ? 

Fourthly, the doctrine concerning the last things will 
very probably be an open, unsettled question. Only a 
glance at the history of opinion down to the most recent 
times is enough to show that man has in vain sought t<? 
solve the problem of the immortality and future destiny ol 
the soul. But let the religion of the future pronounce a 
decisive word on these high doctrines ; how little will it 
gain since it has no new proofs to bring forward, and has 
nothing but human insight to rest upon. And then, a 
future state being admitted, are there to be rewards and 
punishments? May sin, here, affect our state in that fu- 
ture life? If it may, we need some help from God, which 
the religion does not make sure. If it may not, of what 
value is the future life in relation to conduct? What if 
the future life in that case but a barren fact standing a 
great way off? Thus, whether we consider the uncertainty 
in which the religion must remain concerning a future life. 
or the slender use it makes of this doctrine in the way of a 
motive and of elevating man above worldly things, it will 
be found quite indifferent whether the doctrine be re- 
tained or discarded ; at the best, it will be an appendage 
of no importance. 

The whole of what we have said thus far, and especially 
the consideration of the slender stock of truth at the dis- 
posal of the religion of the future, makes it clear that the 
motive power of such a religion, its influence on life and 
character, must be exceedingly small. Some room will bo 



The Religion of the Future. 383 

left for reverence, and for the sense of dependence ; thank- 
fulness also may be awakened to a degree, although crip- 
pled by doubts concerning Providence. But how narrow 
will be the range of trust, how feeble the vigor of hope, 
having no promises to feed upon ; how poor a part will be 
played by faith in things unseen ! And if the doctrine of 
immortal life gives an immense amplitude to human ac- 
tion, enlarges our sense of our own importance in the uni- 
verse, and adds untold force to the reason for improving 
our character, how lame will all efforts at moral excellence 
be, how small the motive, how trifling the issues of con- 
duct, when this great truth shall be feebly held or quite 
discarded ! 

But in lieu of all other considerations touching this 
point we urge that the new religion will have no fuel for 
love towards God, that the harmony of the human and 
divine soul will be nearly impossible. The justice of this 
remark will stand in a clear light if we consider what ex- 
cites the emotion of love, — of love, we mean, as involving 
complacency, confidence, and general harmony of spirit, — 
and how it differs from some other feelings that play a 
part in religion. The feeling of reverence will be aroused 
according to the laws of our nature, although we may 
have a very dim perception of the power that we revere. 
So the sense of dependence implies indeed an object on 
which we depend, but gives no light in regard to the quali- 
ties of that object. But love needs for its existence some 
sort of disclosure or revelation of the feelings and charac- 
ter of the object towards which it goes forth. Between 
man and man love cannot arise, unless each party has a 
manifestation of the character and feelings of the other. 
We cannot love an unknown person, nor love on conjec- 
ture, nor love an intellect. It is the same in the case of 
the Divine Being. There must go before all love to Him 
some conviction of His moral excellence, and as love is re- 
ciprocal, some assurance that He can love in return. And 



384 The Religion of the Future. 

hence, again, there must be some persuasion that He can 
regard sinners with favor in spite of their sins. The his. 
tory of heathenism, the convictions of our own sinful 
natures will show us that a sense of guilt without an assu- 
rance of pardon must drive men from the face of God ; 
they will show us the justice of the words, " We love 
Him because He first loved us." 

Now then if the Gospel which claims to be a revelation 
of God's character and of His mercy is to be abandoned as 
untrue, what room is left for man's love to Him ? He has 
become an unknown God ; how can we love Him of whose 
character we know little, and of His feelings towards us 
next to nothing ? Will it be said that something within 
us leads us irresistibly to conceive of Him as absolute 
moral perfection ? Were we to grant this, which the 
diversities of human religions do not justify, yet love re- 
quires more , it demands some knowledge of the relations 
between Him and ourselves ; and how do we gain any in- 
formation on this point from our insights and instinctive 
judgments? If our nature assures us that He loves the 
good, must it not equally reveal to us His alienation from 
the morally evil ? How then with our conscience of sin 
can we love Him whom we have offended, love Him of 
whose pardon we have no assurance, love Him in whose 
Bight our nature is unholy ? Love, then, in its highest and 
noblest forms must be a stranger to the religion of the 
future. If love to God is the crown of our character, if to 
call such a sentiment into life constitutes one of the chief 
glories of Christ's religion, as well as one of the great 
sources of its strength, must not a religion that knows lit- 
tle of God, and nothing of forgiveness, be incapable of 
forming beautiful lives ? Must it not perish and become 
despised from its very weakness ? 

In short, the religion will be of this earth, getting next 
to no influence from the unseen life beyond this world, or 
from the unseen life above this world. It lacks, therefore, 



The Religion of the Future. 385 

the power of faith and the possibility of a life of faith. 
Can the age when it shall be established fail of being in- 
tensely "worldly, and epicurean ? Think of the art and 
literature of such an age : think of the spirit they must 
breathe ; think of the loss of motives for morality and a 
religious life at which we hinted just now. Can such a 
prospect fail to excite deep alarm ? 

IV. We remark very briefly that the new religion of 
which we speak will be without the strength derived from 
a church and its institutions. 

The Christian Church of the present, with all its faults 
and weaknesses, is the salt and the light of the world. 
As holding, preserving, and spreading the faith of Christ, 
as built on the feeling of brotherhood, and on trust in a 
common Saviour, as bound together by social worship, 
sacraments, a ministry and a discipline, and as containing 
in itself a self-reforming power, it is one of the bonds 
which bind mankind together, and on it the hopes of man- 
kind in a great measure rest. Its influence extends far 
beyond its own pale, and beyond the religious interests of 
man ; it originates or aids every effort to make him wiser, 
happier, and more manly. 

What now can take the place of the church, or com- 
pensate man for its fall, as fall it must, if the old histori- 
cal religion is abandoned ? What common hopes, what 
common object of reverence or love will the new religion 
have to offer to its professors, nay, what common faith can 
it supply them with, except a few meagre shreds not 
large enough to cover the nakedness of reason ? It must 
have worship, but what kind of worship ? That in which 
sentimentality and taste take the lead, with the fewest, 
the weakest appeals to religious feeling. Will it intro- 
duce prayer into its public services, when the question of 
an answer to prayer is unsettled, or denied ; or thanks- 
giving, when a Providence is doubted, and blind law ac- 
counts for all things? Can it have institutions ? Institu- 



386 The Religion of the Future. 

tions of a historical origin are out of the question, because 
the religion has no history from which to draw them. 
Institutions made for the sake of having them it can in- 
vent, but how weak the hold on the mind of man of such 
institutions, how small their venerableness ! What can it 
have or find to replace the sacred supper ? Compare the 
fellowship pertaining to such a dead skeleton of a religion 
with membership in Christ. Compare its preaching on a 
narrow round of dogmas with the inexhaustible themes 
of the Christian pulpit. Must not, in fact, morality take 
the place of religion in the pulpit, and religious doctrine 
be no more looked to as suggesting the great motives of 
action? Compare the probable zeal for its propagation 
with that resulting from the nature of the Gospel, and 
from the command of Christ, " Go ye into all the world." 
Can there be much zeal for its diffusion, especially as long 
as its friends maintain that the systems of heathenism in- 
volve all the essential truths of religion ? "Wherever we 
turn, then, we discover its weaknesses, we cannot find one 
element of power. It will make no place for itself in the 
affections of human souls. 

V. If these things are so, human progress must cease, 
and civilization, whenever the world shall throw away its 
faith in revealed religion, must decline. 

We seem to ourselves to have shown, that, whether the 
form, the evidence, the substance, the motive poAver, or the 
social influences of the new rival of Christianity be taken 
into view, it is wholly weak and unreliable. Can the 
destinies of mankind be safely entrusted to a religion 
without facts, without authority, with a minimum of doc- 
trines, and with no institutions at all ? Must not the ad- 
vancement of society in all that is good cease, if 
Christianity is to lose its hold upon the faith and love of 
men? If a large factor be thrown out of the account, 
must not the product be greatly lessened ? 

There is but one answer to this question: such a decline 



The Religion of the Future. 387 

must take place, unless in the future other influences are 
to make up for the diminished power of religion. Just 
this, we suppose, is what many thinkers anticipate, who 
have rejected the claims of Christianity. We apprehend, 
that, as a class, those who have looked upon bare Theism 
as the heir and successor of the Gospel, do not put very 
much of dependence upon this predicted religion of the 
future ; we conceive that it is expected to take its place .as 
a handmaid and not as a mistress, while civilization, or 
progress, is looked upon as the coming Queen of the 
world. The bitter taunt of the Greek poet is to be ful- 
filled, who makes his sophist say, that Vortex or Whirl 
has expelled Jupiter from his throne ; God is to cease to 
reign and Progress will take his place.* This doctrine of 
progress may adopt the form of a fatal development, or 
that of a free advance in accordance with a divine plan. 
The first form, or that which it must assume in a panthe- 
istic theory of the world, does not now concern us. The 
other form, or that which a Theist, who rejects the Scrip- 
tures, can embrace, will be something like this : that, in 
the course of time there will be such an accumulation of 
knowledge, such a lifting up of man above nature, such 
improvements in government and legislation, such refine- 
ment diffused through society, that even in the lowest 
classes, the propension will be towards sobriety, honesty, 
chastity, and kindness. And so a very little influence 
from religion, very little knowledge of God, or concern 
about Him will give all needed aid to the advancement 
of mankind. 

A theory of human progress like this deserves, on 
account of its importance, an extended examination ; we 
must content ourselves, however, with two or three re- 
marks that bear on our subject more immediately : we 
observe, then, 

First, that the facts do not justify the hope oi' such a 

*Aristoph. Nubes, 381, Ao-os reigns vice Aid?. 



388 The Religion of the Future. 

progress ; we mean, that the improvements which have 
been made in society must be ascribed chiefly to Christi- 
anity ; that advances in physical science have no great 
weight in bringing about moral ones ; and that ameliora- 
tions of governments and of society can scarcely begin, 
cannot be made permanent, without the aid of religion. 

It is apparent that a benevolent feeling aroused by the 
Gospel has, in fact, had very much to do with modern 
reforms ; with reforms, for example, in prison discipline, 
in the houses, habits, and privileges of the poor, in pro- 
moting temperance, in putting an end to the slave trade 
and to slavery, in sending light to the ignorant, in en- 
deavoring to spread the spirit of peace. Christ's religion 
has in fact taken the lead in schemes for the benefit of 
society, and it will be scarcely maintained that, while 
thus at the head of this blessed movement, it has crippled 
or suppressed other benevolent forces, which can take its 
place when it shall become extinct. For where are they? 
Were they in action when the Gospel overcame heathen- 
ism, and were they put in the background by it as by 
some jealous monarch ? On the other hand, without the 
Gospel the field and the energy of benevolence will be 
vastly lessened. The field will be earthly relations almost 
exclusively. The energy will be paralyzed, when the 
gonception of God's kingdom on earth, and faith in 
divine influences shall be discarded, when the doctrine of 
a future life shall be disbelieved or just clung to amid 
the waves of uncertainty. 

Again, the advance of science does not, in fact, secure 
the advance of society, notwithstanding all the efforts of 
Christians and other benevolent persons. As far as the 
past can teach us, science may add indefinitely to its 
stores, while society continues corrupt or degenerate. 
There are armies of thieves and of reprobates, worse than 
heathen, within sound of the voice of the great lecturers 
of Paris. Officers of preventive and of correctional police 



The Religion of the Future. 389 

have plenty of work to do in all large cities, both in 
Europe and this free land. In some respects the danger- 
ous classes in large towns are worse than they were. 
They know more, and are more excitable. Their know- 
ledge, having nothing to do with rules of conduct and the 
meaning of life, being in fact such as a class of men with- 
out religion would gather, makes them craftier, more able 
to combine, more able to evade justice. 

Nor is there any necessary connection between the ad- 
vance of science and the improvement of political institu- 
tions. Even the theory of politics may be conformed to 
true science in a nation, while yet the body politic may 
have no power to govern itself or to shake off abuses. 
The moral energy, the spirit of self-sacrifice, the courage 
to attempt reform in the right way, the hope of success, 
the healthful tone of opinion in society concerning justice, 
all these and other sources of national health are far less 
dependent on the state of science than on religious and 
moral influences. Nations, in order to grow great, or 
become free, or remain free, must, like single men, have 
strength of character, and this is mainly from moral and 
religious culture, or from a certain simplicity of life which 
is lost in high cultivation. 

2. But in the second place, theories of human progress, 
like that at which we are looking, misconceive of and 
underrate the power appropriate to religion in the civili- 
zation of the world, and also give an exceedingly earthly 
view of life. 

They misconceive of the civilizing power of the Gospel. 
At least they seem to conceive of Christians as thinking 
that religion of itself, without the aid of any other 
agencies, is the sole source of human improvement and 
civilization. But the true and received statement is that 
religion controls the forces which mould and refine the 
soul and society. It is the main-spring or the governing 
wheel which gives motion, and it also regulates and har- 



390 The Religion of the Future. 

monizes all movement. It is in harmony with all truth 
and in sympathy with all improvement, but it acts not 
only through its own direct invisible power, but through 
the laws of nature, of the soul, and of society. It looks 
on the science of nature with favor, because this is an 
exposition of the thoughts of God, and thus science has a 
strong, healthy growth under its fostering influence. It 
sends the individual's thoughts within, and thus aids the 
science of the soul. It makes him aware of his rights 
and his duties, and thus helps to build up a true phi- 
losophy of man in the state, as well as a just society. It 
elevates his feelings and purifies his taste, and thus gives 
wing to true art. It is the foe of vice, and thus of all 
ignorance and of all oppression. But its glory lies in 
making " all things new," not without other agencies, but 
through its control over them, and through its sway over 
the individual soul. 

Again, in such theories of civilization, the power of the 
Christian religion seems to be greatly underrated. In the 
first place, a due value is not set upon that which is dis- 
tinctively Christian, as compared with that which belongs 
to Judaism and to natural religion. The history of 
Christian art, the examination of religious experience, if 
we look to no other sources of proof, will show us that the 
great sway over life and society proceeds from that which 
is new in Christianity, from Christ in His person, life, aud 
work, from forgiveness of sins and redemption, from the 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit, from the judgment and the 
future state. Take all this away, and you take away, if 
we are not deceived, nearly all that constitutes the superi- 
ority and the glory of Christian civilization. 

But again, such theories contemplate the civilizing 
forces of Christianity as standing side by side, with those 
of literature, art, science, law, and government. Tariffs, 
roads, and printing presses, are held to be as original and 
as efficient benefactors of society, as Bibles and sermons. 



The Religion of the Future. 



391 



But this seems to be a very serious mistake, which grows 
out of another, still more fundamental, concerning the 
nature of man, — an assumption that he is unfallen, that 
he has all power within himself, without the aid of new 
truth from Heaven, to elevate his condition. Is it not 
evident that the system of practical forces, which makes 
up the Gospel, must, if believed and loved, govern the 
will, heart, and life of the individual, and that through 
the amelioration of the individual, all civilizing in- 
fluences will be either perfected or originated? What 
the Gospel has done or can do in the way of benefiting 
society, the institutions it founds, the science it warms 
into life, ought not surely to be alleged as reasons why we 
can get along at some future day without the Gospel. 
The Gospel is not the schoolmaster who leaves the grown- 
up pupil to be guided by his own reason ; it is the leaven 
hid in the meal until the whole mass is leavened. 

The conservation of society can be entrusted only to 
moral and religious forces. If religion has no moving, 
preserving, checking, or balancing power, or if r as is true 
of heathenism, it is itself immoral, then art, literature, 
whatever promotes the advance of society, is paralyzed or 
corrupted ; and there comes on a decline of society, as in 
Greece after Alexander and in Rome under the emperors, 
without hope of recovery from any internal power. On 
the other hand, if, as is true in the case of Christianity, 
the religion is ethical in the highest sense, in the sense 
not only of teaching morals but of enlarging the concep- 
tion of what is right, and supplying the highest motives 
for the ennoblement of character, then there is a founda- 
tion laid, on which society, with all its interests, can rest, 
and there is opportunity for all that progress which is 
possible in consistency with the condition of man. 

We are now prepared to say, that if the influences from 
the Gospel should be withdrawn, a most earthly civiliza- 
tion, one having its own doom written on its forehead, 



392 The Religion of the Future. 

would take the place of that which Christianity has been 
the leading agent in forming. Suppose, for instance, that 
all thinkers should lose faith in the immortality of the 
soul. Is it not evident, that with the abandonment of this 
one truth, the concerns of the present world would begin 
to assume a new relative importance, that all motives 
drawn from a life to come would be feeble, that self-grati- 
fication must rise in value, and self-denial fall, that all the 
aspirations of man must droop and wither? Is it not 
evident, that something of that mingled frivolity and des- 
pair which Atheism engenders, and of which heathen so- 
ciety, especially in its decay, when its faith is lost, gives us 
examples, would brood over the world? For how could 
civilization fail to decline, when frivolity blighted the 
taste and depraved the moral judgments, and when 
despair, the sense of the emptiness of life, took away the 
stimulus from all noble endeavor? 

3. Finally, in one very important respect the very pro- 
gress of society demands the assurances and supports of 
positive Christian truth. As knowledge and refinement 
increase, the standard of character tends to rise, and along 
with it will deepen the feeling of responsibility and the 
pain of falling below the standard. A sense of imperfec- 
tion — of sinfulness, if we may call it so, as keen as any 
other sense and more indestructible, will then be in vig- 
orous exercise. How is this sense to be satisfied without a 
Gospel? Heathenism has had its method of satisfying the 
consciousness of sin, its reconciliation of man and God, in 
which lay no small part of its strength. Christianity has 
its method, and herein lies much of the service which it 
has rendered to mankind. But naked Deism, the religion 
of human insight and natural reason, says nothing of 
pardon and redemption, nothing of a helping, life-giving 
Spirit. In this respect it occupies a much weaker position 
than that which is taken by the systems of necessary de- 
velopment. They legitimately deny the reality of moral 



The Religion of ike Future. 



393 



evil. It has for them no existence, because the will is not 
free, or because sin, being a necessary stage for finite 
minds, is not objectively evil. But a system, in which a 
personal God is a central principle, cannot extinguish the 
sense of sin or deny its reality. Nay, the farther the true 
refinement of society is carried, the higher the standard of 
character is raised, and the vaster the creation is shown to 
be by science; so much the more grandeur and glory are 
spread around the throne of God. Sin, then, tends to en- 
large in its dimensions before the eye of a refined age 
which has not thrown aside its faith in the moral attri- 
butes of God. But Deism has nothing to satisfy this sense 
of sin but baseless hopes and analogies drawn from the 
unexplained dealings of God. If God ought to forgive 
because the best conceptions of human virtue include for- 
giveness, He ought to have indignation against sin, because 
that too enters as an element into our ideal of perfect cha- 
racter. And how terrible that indignation ! What dis- 
tance so vast as that between the Infinite One, inhabitiug 
His dwelling-place of holiness, and a soul conscious of 
selfishness and of impurity! The course of things, if 
Deism should be the ultimate form of religion, can easily 
be foretold. As long as the recollections and influences 
of Christianity survived its fall, earnest souls would hope 
on, they would stay their soul-hunger on the milk drawn 
from the breasts of their dead mother. But a new age 
would toss about in uncertainty, if not in despair; or else, 
throwing aside their Deism which brings before their 
wearied minds the unsolved problem of the relations of 
sinning man to a holy God, they would hunt after peace 
in the fields of Atheistic or Pantheistic philosophy. Civil- 
ization with God, but without Christ, leads to a terrible 
dilemma. If the sense of sin remain, the life of all noble 
souls will be an anxious, gloomy tragedy. Or if that 
burden, so crushing, is thrown off, as in a life struggle, then 
the standard of character will fall and the sense of sin 



394 The Religion oj the Future. 

grow faint to such a degree that the pardon from God 
craved in heathenism will not be needed, and the utmost 
frivolity will be reached of life and manners. In either 
case, the progress of civilization will be stopped ; the world 
of the future will be doomed ; and the " religion of the 
future" will turn out to be a miserable raft, unfit, after 
the shipwreck of Christianity, to carry the hopes and the 
welfare of mankind down the agoa. 



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